The 1961 interracial bus journeys through the South that tested federal rulings against segregation in interstate travel and met mob violence.
In December 1960 the Supreme Court held in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation in terminal facilities serving interstate passengers was unlawful, but across the Deep South the “white” and “colored” waiting rooms and lunch counters remained. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), led by James Farmer, set out to test the ruling, reviving the model of the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation that Bayard Rustin and George Houser had organized. On 4 May 1961 thirteen riders, Black and white, left Washington, D.C., on two buses bound for New Orleans.
A mob had already beaten John Lewis at the Rock Hill, South Carolina, bus terminal on 9 May, but in Alabama the rides met organized violence. On 14 May 1961 a mob outside Anniston firebombed one bus and beat passengers as they fled; riders on the second bus were attacked in Birmingham. When CORE suspended the campaign, Nashville student activists coordinated by Diane Nash resolved that violence would not be allowed to stop it, and on 17 May new riders set out from Nashville. On 20 May, arriving in Montgomery, they were beaten at the bus station; Lewis and Jim Zwerg were among the most badly injured. Martin Luther King Jr. returned to Montgomery to address a rally in support of the riders.
Through the summer, more than 60 rides crossed the South. In Jackson, Mississippi, police arrested riders as they arrived, and more than 300 activists were jailed, many of them in the state penitentiary at Parchman. Lawyers including Constance Baker Motley defended those arrested. The pressure worked: on 22 September 1961 the Interstate Commerce Commission issued an order banning segregation in interstate bus travel, effective 1 November 1961. The rides also expanded the membership and reach of CORE and SNCC, the organizations that would later anchor Freedom Summer.
See also: Sit-In, Freedom Summer, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Plessy v. Ferguson
Sources
- Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, “Freedom Rides.” Link
- National Park Service, Freedom Riders National Monument. Link
- SNCC Digital Gateway, “Freedom Rides.” Link
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