Freedom Ride Essays - Freedom Riders, Community Organizing

Freedom Ride The purpose of the Freedom Ride was to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia in 1960. The decision said that it was unconstitutional to have segregation in interstate bus and rail stations. The first Freedom Ride began on May 4, 1961. A group of seven blacks and six whites from a group called CORE decided to see test the Supreme Court Decision. They planned a trip from Washington, DC on Greyhound and Trailway buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and end with a rally in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 17. During the trip the whites would sit in the back and the blacks in the front of the buses. At rest stops, the whites would go into blacks-only areas and blacks would go into whites-only areas. They weren?t doing anything illegal because the Supreme Court decision said that they could do this but they figured that they were going to have problems because the people didn?t like this. The trip started off with only a few small problems but things got worse. On May 14 the group split up onto two different buses in Alabama. One bus was met by a group of about 200 angry mobsters who stoned the bus and slashed the tires. When the bus stopped to fix the tires, the bus was firebombed. The other bus didn?t do much better. It was met by a mob in Birmingham and who beat up many of the riders. The Freedom Riders did not let the violence end their trip. They wanted to finish what they started so they continued their journey. They traveled from Birmingham to Montgomery without more problems but when they arrived in Montgomery they were attacked badly by a mob of more than 1000 whites. The police did not help stop the violence. The attacks made other people in the rest of the country speak up for the Freedom Riders and demand that the President Kennedy stop the violence. More people joined the Freedom Rider but there were still more attacks and also a lot of them got sent to jail. They never ended up making it to New Orleans. Their trip wasn?t for nothing though. After seeing what happened to the Freedom Riders a lot of people starting speaking out to the government to take a stand on civil rights. Finally, the Interstate Commerce Commission outlawed segregation in interstate bus travel in a ruling in November 1961. The Freedom Riders didn?t finish their trip, but they still made an important contribution to the civil rights movement. http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/freeride.html http://www.core-online.org/History/freedom%20rides.htm