A History of the Civil Rights Movement

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A History of the Civil Rights Movement

Americans had a legal right to be in any restaurant or bus terminal that served insterstate passengers. In the months following the Boynton v. Virginia decision, some African Americans decided to test local policies regarding segregation in buses and bus stations throughout the South. This was the start of the Freedom

Rides. The first one left Washington, D.C., on May 4, bound for New Orleans. It was organized and led by James L. Farmer, who had co-found ed the Congress of Racial Equality in the 1940s. At first the Riders encountered little trouble, but they were brutally attacked and the bus firebombed when it reached Birmingham, Alabama. During the spring and summer of 1961, more than 400 people, both black and white, participated in

On their trip, Freedom Riders sometimes sang, “Get on the bus, sit anyplace, ’cause Irene Morgan won her case.” This was a reference to the landmark Supreme Court decision Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946), which declared segregation of interstate trans portation facilities illegal. Did You Know?

Freedom Rides. Many were members of SNCC or CORE. These Freedom Riders often faced mobs of angry whites. Segregationists intercepted buses, pulled riders off, and beat them. In Birmingham, Ku Klux Klansmen used bats, iron pipes, and chains to beat a group of Freedom Riders that included John Lewis and a young white student named James Zwerg. Photographs of these brutal incidents shocked the nation. Those Freedom Riders who avoided attacks were often jailed for breaking local laws. Diane Nash, who helped organize the Freedom Rides, later said: If the Freedom Riders had been stopped as a result of violence, I strongly felt that the future of the movement was going to be cut short. The impression would have been that whenever a movement starts, all [you have to do] is attack it with massive violence and the blacks [will] stop. That September the Kennedy administration called on the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce the ban on segregation in trains and