Freedom Rides

The Congress of Racial Equality took the offensive on May 4, 1961. Similar to Bayard Rustin’s efforts in the 1940s, CORE mounted racially integrated Freedom Rides to test whether facilities in the South, from Virginia to Louisiana, were complying with the 1960 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregated bus and train stations serving passengers who were traveling interstate. CORE had alerted the Justice Department and the FBI of its plans, but the riders received no protection when Klan-dominated mobs in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama, attacked two buses containing activists, seriously wounding several passengers.

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Freedom Rides, 1961 On May 4, 1961, two buses of black and white riders left Washington, D.C., and headed for New Orleans to desegregate bus terminal facilities along the route. When one of the buses arrived in Anniston, Alabama, it was attacked and burned by white mobs, forcing the passengers to flee for safety. Despite the violence, the Freedom Rides continued and grew in scope. Library of Congress

After safety concerns forced CORE to forgo the rest of the trip, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) rushed to Birmingham to continue the bus rides. The Kennedy administration urged them to reconsider, but Diane Nash, a SNCC founder, explained that although the group realized the peril of resuming the journey, “we can’t let them stop us with violence. If we do, the movement is dead.” When the replenished busload of riders reached Montgomery on May 20, they were brutally assaulted by a mob. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who supported the rides but had not participated in them, subsequently held a rally in a Montgomery church, which became the target of renewed white attacks that threatened the lives of King and the Freedom Riders inside the building. Faced with the prospect of serious bloodshed, the Kennedy administration dispatched federal marshals to the scene and persuaded the governor to call out the Alabama National Guard to ensure the safety of everyone in the church.

The president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, worked out a compromise to let the rides continue with minimal violence and publicity; at the same time, Robert Kennedy petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue an order prohibiting segregated transportation facilities, which went into effect in November 1961. Despite the ICC declaration, many southern communities refused to comply. When Freedom Riders encountered opposition in Albany, Georgia, in the fall of 1961, SNCC workers remained in Albany and helped local leaders organize residents of the town against segregation and other forms of racial discrimination. Even with the assistance of Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Albany movement stalled, as the Kennedy administration refused to provide support.