Freedom Rides (1961): Challenging Segregated Interstate Buses

The Freedom Rides were a civil rights campaign in 1961 in which groups of Black and white volunteers rode interstate buses into the segregated American South to test whether federal rulings against segregation in travel were being enforced. The first ride left Washington, DC, on 4 May 1961. Riders were firebombed in Anniston and beaten in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, and hundreds were jailed in Mississippi, but their persistence forced the federal government to act.

Background: rulings without enforcement

In Morgan v. Virginia (1946) the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on interstate buses was unconstitutional, and in Boynton v. Virginia (December 1960) it extended the ban to restaurants and waiting rooms in bus terminals serving interstate travellers. Across the Deep South, however, “whites only” signs remained, and state and local officials ignored the rulings.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights group committed to non-violent direct action, decided to test them. It had tried a similar experiment, the Journey of Reconciliation, in 1947 in the upper South. In 1961 its national director, James Farmer, planned a more ambitious ride through the Deep South, aiming to provoke a crisis that would force the new Kennedy administration to enforce the law. President John F. Kennedy, in office since January 1961, was cautious on civil rights, fearing both the loss of Southern Democratic support in Congress and damage to America’s image during the Cold War.

The first ride

Thirteen riders, seven Black and six white, left Washington on 4 May 1961 on Greyhound and Trailways buses, planning to reach New Orleans on 17 May, the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. They included Farmer, the veteran pacifist James Peck and the young seminary student John Lewis. They trained beforehand in how to absorb abuse without retaliating.

The journey through Virginia and North Carolina was largely peaceful. In Rock Hill, South Carolina, on 9 May, Lewis and another rider were attacked when they tried to enter a whites-only waiting room. Farmer left the ride in Atlanta after his father’s death.

Anniston and Birmingham

On Sunday 14 May, Mother’s Day, the Greyhound bus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob of Ku Klux Klan members and others attacked it, smashing windows and slashing its tyres. The bus limped out of town and stopped a few miles away, where the attackers threw a firebomb through a window and held the door shut. The riders escaped as the bus filled with smoke and were then beaten; a warning shot from an undercover state investigator helped prevent a lynching.

The Trailways bus reached Birmingham later the same day. Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor’s officers were absent for around 15 minutes while Klansmen beat the riders at the terminal. James Peck needed dozens of stitches to his head. With drivers refusing to carry them further, the original riders flew to New Orleans.

The students take over

Diane Nash, a leader of the Nashville student movement, insisted that the rides must continue, believing that violence must not be allowed to stop them. Students from Nashville travelled to Birmingham to resume the journey. After days of pressure from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama officials promised protection, and on 20 May a bus carried the riders to Montgomery.

At the Montgomery Greyhound station the promised police protection vanished, and a mob attacked the riders. John Lewis and Jim Zwerg were badly beaten, and John Seigenthaler, a Justice Department aide sent by Kennedy, was knocked unconscious. On the night of 21 May a crowd besieged the First Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy and some 1,500 supporters had gathered. Federal marshals held the crowd back until Governor John Patterson declared martial law and the National Guard dispersed it.

The riders

The Freedom Riders were a varied group. Most were young, many of them college students, but they also included clergy, teachers and older veterans of the pacifist movement. Black and white volunteers rode together, and men and women both took part, deliberately breaking the rules of segregation that kept the races apart in seating and waiting rooms.

They were trained in non-violent discipline: not to strike back, to protect their heads when attacked and to accept arrest. Many wrote wills or letters to their families before setting out. After the attacks in Alabama, Robert Kennedy called for a “cooling-off period”, but the activists refused, arguing that Black Americans had waited long enough.

Jackson and Parchman

On 24 May the riders went on to Jackson, Mississippi, under National Guard escort. The Kennedy administration had quietly agreed with Mississippi leaders that there would be no violence, but that riders would be arrested. They were charged with breach of the peace as soon as they entered the whites-only waiting room.

Instead of stopping, the movement sent more volunteers. Throughout the summer, riders arrived in Jackson by bus, train and plane. More than 300 were arrested there, and many were transferred to the notorious Parchman state penitentiary, where they were held in harsh conditions. Guards confiscated mattresses and other items as punishment when the prisoners sang freedom songs, but the riders kept singing. Among those jailed was Stokely Carmichael, then a student at Howard University, who later became chairman of SNCC. The Mississippi strategy of mass arrest kept the riders out of the headlines for a time, but it also turned imprisonment into a badge of honour within the movement. In total more than 400 people took part in over 60 Freedom Rides in 1961.

The ICC ruling

On 29 May 1961 Robert Kennedy petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue clear rules. On 22 September the ICC ordered that interstate buses and terminals be desegregated, with “whites only” signs removed, effective 1 November 1961. Compliance was uneven, but by the end of 1962 most terminal segregation had ended. In some towns activists had to return to test compliance, and segregation in other public places, from restaurants to swimming pools, remained legal in much of the South until 1964.

Legacy

The Freedom Rides showed that non-violent volunteers could force the federal government’s hand, and they gave SNCC and CORE a foothold in Mississippi that led to later voter registration work and Freedom Summer. Many riders, among them John Lewis, became lifelong leaders. Together with the student sit-ins that began at Greensboro, the rides helped build momentum towards the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In January 2017 sites in Anniston were designated the Freedom Riders National Monument.

Timeline

• 1960, 5 December: Supreme Court rules in Boynton v. Virginia.
• 1961, 4 May: The first Freedom Ride leaves Washington, DC.
• 1961, 9 May: John Lewis is attacked in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
• 1961, 14 May: The Greyhound bus is firebombed near Anniston; riders are beaten in Birmingham.
• 1961, 20 May: Mob attacks riders at the Montgomery bus station.
• 1961, 21 May: First Baptist Church in Montgomery is besieged.
• 1961, 24 May: Riders are arrested on arrival in Jackson, Mississippi.
• 1961, 22 September: The ICC issues its desegregation order.
• 1961, 1 November: The ICC rules take effect.

Why it matters

The Freedom Rides turned a legal right that existed only on paper into a reality on the road. By accepting violence and jail rather than turning back, the riders exposed the brutality of segregation to the nation and showed that the federal government could be compelled to protect civil rights.