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Freedom Riders

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 20, 2022 | Original: February 2, 2010

Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Freedom Riders tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters at bus stations in Alabama, South Carolina and other Southern states. The groups were confronted by arresting police officers—as well as horrific violence from white protestors—along their routes, but also drew international attention to the civil rights movement.

Civil Rights Activists Test Supreme Court Decision

The 1961 Freedom Rides, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) , were modeled after the organization’s 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. During the 1947 action, African American and white bus riders tested the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Morgan v. Virginia that found segregated bus seating was unconstitutional.

The 1961 Freedom Rides sought to test a 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals, was unconstitutional as well. A big difference between the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation and the 1961 Freedom Rides was the inclusion of women in the later initiative.

In both actions, Black riders traveled to the Jim Crow South—where segregation continued to occur—and attempted to use whites-only restrooms, lunch counters and waiting rooms.

The original group of 13 Freedom Riders—seven African Americans and six whites—left Washington, D.C. , on a Greyhound bus on May 4, 1961. Their plan was to reach New Orleans , Louisiana , on May 17 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of the nation’s public schools was unconstitutional.

The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina , drawing little public notice. The first violent incident occurred on May 12 in Rock Hill, South Carolina . John Lewis , an African American seminary student and member of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), white Freedom Rider and World War II veteran Albert Bigelow and another Black rider were viciously attacked as they attempted to enter a whites-only waiting area.

The next day, the group reached Atlanta, Georgia , where some of the riders split off onto a Trailways bus.

Did you know? John Lewis, one of the original group of 13 Freedom Riders, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1986. Lewis, a Democrat, continued to represent Georgia's 5th Congressional District, which includes Atlanta, until his death in 2020.

Freedom Riders Face Bloodshed in Alabama

On May 14, 1961, the Greyhound bus was the first to arrive in Anniston, Alabama . There, an angry mob of about 200 white people surrounded the bus, causing the driver to continue past the bus station.

The mob followed the bus in automobiles, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. The Freedom Riders escaped the bus as it burst into flames, only to be brutally beaten by members of the surrounding mob.

The second bus, a Trailways vehicle, traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, and those riders were also beaten by an angry white mob, many of whom brandished metal pipes. Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor stated that, although he knew the Freedom Riders were arriving and violence awaited them, he posted no police protection at the station because it was Mother’s Day .

Photographs of the burning Greyhound bus and the bloodied riders appeared on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country and around the world the next day, drawing international attention to the Freedom Riders’ cause and the state of race relations in the United States.

Following the widespread violence, CORE officials could not find a bus driver who would agree to transport the integrated group, and they decided to abandon the Freedom Rides. However, Diane Nash , an activist from the SNCC, organized a group of 10 students from Nashville, Tennessee , to continue the rides.

U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy , brother of President John F. Kennedy , began negotiating with Governor John Patterson of Alabama and the bus companies to secure a driver and state protection for the new group of Freedom Riders. The rides finally resumed, on a Greyhound bus departing Birmingham under police escort, on May 20.

Federal Marshals Called In

The violence toward the Freedom Riders was not quelled—rather, the police abandoned the Greyhound bus just before it arrived at the Montgomery, Alabama, terminal, where a white mob attacked the riders with baseball bats and clubs as they disembarked. Attorney General Kennedy sent 600 federal marshals to the city to stop the violence.

The following night, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr . led a service at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, which was attended by more than one thousand supporters of the Freedom Riders. A riot ensued outside the church, and King called Robert Kennedy to ask for protection.

Kennedy summoned the federal marshals, who used tear gas to disperse the white mob. Patterson declared martial law in the city and dispatched the National Guard to restore order.

Kennedy Urges ‘Cooling Off’ Period 

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders departed Montgomery for Jackson, Mississippi . There, several hundred supporters greeted the riders. However, those who attempted to use the whites-only facilities were arrested for trespassing and taken to the maximum-security penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi.

That same day, U.S. Attorney General Kennedy issued a statement urging a “cooling off” period in the face of the growing violence:

“A very difficult condition exists now in the states of Mississippi and Alabama. Besides the groups of 'Freedom Riders' traveling through these states, there are curiosity seekers, publicity seekers and others who are seeking to serve their own causes, as well as many persons who are traveling because they must use the interstate carriers to reach their destination.

In this confused situation, there is increasingly possibility that innocent persons may be injured. A mob asks no questions.

A cooling off period is needed. It would be wise for those traveling through these two Sites to delay their trips until the present state of confusion and danger has passed and an atmosphere of reason and normalcy has been restored.” 

During the Mississippi hearings, the judge turned and looked at the wall rather than listen to the Freedom Riders’ defense—as had been the case when sit-in participants were arrested for protesting segregated lunch counters in Tennessee. He sentenced the riders to 30 days in jail.

Attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ), a civil rights organization, appealed the convictions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court , which reversed them.

Desegregating Travel

The violence and arrests continued to garner national and international attention, and drew hundreds of new Freedom Riders to the cause.

The rides continued over the next several months, and in the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals.

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Freedom Rides

May 4, 1961 to December 16, 1961

During the spring of 1961, student activists from the  Congress of Racial Equality  (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides to challenge segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals. Traveling on buses from Washington, D.C., to Jackson, Mississippi, the riders met violent opposition in the Deep South, garnering extensive media attention and eventually forcing federal intervention from John F.  Kennedy ’s administration. Although the campaign succeeded in securing an Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ban on segregation in all facilities under their jurisdiction, the Freedom Rides fueled existing tensions between student activists and Martin Luther King, Jr., who publicly supported the riders, but did not participate in the campaign. 

The Freedom Rides were first conceived in 1947 when CORE and the  Fellowship of Reconciliation  organized an interracial bus ride across state lines to test a Supreme Court decision that declared segregation on interstate buses unconstitutional. Called the Journey of Reconciliation, the ride challenged bus segregation in the upper parts of the South, avoiding the more dangerous Deep South. The lack of confrontation, however, resulted in little media attention and failed to realize CORE’s goals for the rides. Fourteen years later, in a new national context of  sit-ins , boycotts, and the emergence of the  Southern Christian Leadership Conference  and the  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee  (SNCC), the Freedom Rides were able to harness enough national attention to force federal enforcement and policy changes. 

Following an earlier ruling,  Morgan v. Virginia  (1946), that made segregation in interstate transportation illegal, in 1960 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in  Boynton v. Virginia  that segregation in the facilities provided for interstate travelers, such as bus terminals, restaurants, and restrooms, was also unconstitutional. Prior to the 1960 decision, two students, John  Lewis  and Bernard  Lafayette , integrated their bus ride home from college in Nashville, Tennessee, by sitting at the front of a bus and refusing to move. After this first ride, they saw CORE’s announcement recruiting volunteers to participate in a Freedom Ride, a longer bus trip through the South to test the enforcement of  Boynton . Lafayette’s parents would not permit him to participate, but Lewis joined 12 other activists to form an interracial group that underwent extensive training in nonviolent direct action before launching the ride. 

On 4 May 1961, the freedom riders left Washington, D.C., in two buses and headed to New Orleans. Although they faced resistance and arrests in Virginia, it was not until the riders arrived in Rock Hill, South Carolina, that they encountered violence. The beating of Lewis and another rider, coupled with the arrest of one participant for using a whites-only restroom, attracted widespread media coverage. In the days following the incident, the riders met King and other civil rights leaders in Atlanta for dinner. During this meeting, King whispered prophetically to  Jet  reporter Simeon Booker, who was covering the story, “You will never make it through Alabama” (Lewis, 140). 

The ride continued to Anniston, Alabama, where, on 14 May, riders were met by a violent mob of over 100 people. Before the buses’ arrival, Anniston local authorities had given permission to the Ku Klux Klan to strike against the freedom riders without fear of arrest. As the first bus pulled up, the driver yelled outside, “Well, boys, here they are. I brought you some niggers and nigger-lovers” (Arsenault, 143). One of the buses was firebombed, and its fleeing passengers were forced into the angry white mob. The violence continued at the Birmingham terminal where Eugene “Bull”  Connor ’s police force offered no protection. Although the violence garnered national media attention, the series of attacks prompted James  Farmer  of CORE to end the campaign. The riders flew to New Orleans, bringing to an end the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s. 

The decision to end the ride frustrated student activists, such as Diane  Nash , who argued in a phone conversation with Farmer: “We can’t let them stop us with violence. If we do, the movement is dead” (Ross, 177). Under the auspices and organizational support of SNCC, the Freedom Rides continued. SNCC mentors were wary of this decision, including King, who had declined to join the rides when asked by Nash and Rodney Powell. Farmer continued to express his reservations, questioning whether continuing the trip was “suicide” (Lewis, 144). With fractured support, the organizers had a difficult time securing financial resources. Nevertheless, on 17 May 1961, seven men and three women rode from Nashville to Birmingham to resume the Freedom Rides. Just before reaching Birmingham, the bus was pulled over and directed to the Birmingham station, where all of the riders were arrested for defying segregation laws. The arrests, coupled with the difficulty of finding a bus driver and other logistical challenges, left the riders stranded in the city for several days. 

Federal intervention began to take place behind the scenes as Attorney General Robert  Kennedy  called the Greyhound Company and demanded that it find a driver. Seeking to diffuse the dangerous situation, John Seigenthaler, a Department of Justice representative accompanying the freedom riders, met with a reluctant Alabama Governor John  Patterson . Seigenthaler’s maneuver resulted in the bus’s departure for Montgomery with a full police escort the next morning. 

At the Montgomery city line, as agreed, the state troopers left the buses, but the local police that had been ordered to meet the freedom riders in Montgomery never appeared. Unprotected when they entered the terminal, riders were beaten so severely by a white mob that some sustained permanent injuries. When the police finally arrived, they served the riders with an injunction barring them from continuing the Freedom Ride in Alabama. 

During this time, King was on a speaking tour in Chicago. Upon learning of the violence, he returned to Montgomery, where he staged a rally at Ralph  Abernathy ’s First Baptist Church. In his speech, King blamed Governor Patterson for “aiding and abetting the forces of violence” and called for federal intervention, declaring that “the federal government must not stand idly by while bloodthirsty mobs beat nonviolent students with impunity” (King, 21 May 1961). As King spoke, a threatening white mob gathered outside. From inside the church, King called Attorney General Kennedy, who assured him that the federal government would protect those inside the church. Kennedy swiftly mobilized federal marshals who used tear gas to keep the mob at bay. Federal marshals were later replaced by the Alabama National Guard, who escorted people out of the church at dawn. 

As the violence and federal intervention propelled the freedom riders to national prominence, King became one of the major spokesmen for the rides. Some activists, however, began to criticize King for his willingness to offer only moral and financial support but not his physical presence on the rides. In a telegram to King the president of the Union County  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  branch in North Carolina, Robert F.  Williams , urged him to “lead the way by example.… If you lack the courage, remove yourself from the vanguard” ( Papers  7:241–242 ). In response to Nash’s direct request that King join the rides, King replied that he was on probation and could not afford another arrest, a response many of the students found unacceptable. 

On 29 May 1961, the Kennedy administration announced that it had directed the ICC to ban segregation in all facilities under its jurisdiction, but the rides continued. Students from all over the country purchased bus tickets to the South and crowded into jails in Jackson, Mississippi. With the participation of northern students came even more press coverage. On 1 November 1961, the ICC ruling that segregation on interstate buses and facilities was illegal took effect. 

Although King’s involvement in the Freedom Rides waned after the federal intervention, the legacy of the rides remained with him. He, and all others involved in the campaign, saw how provoking white southern violence through nonviolent confrontations could attract national attention and force federal action. The Freedom Rides also exposed tactical and leadership rifts between King and more militant student activists, which continued until King’s death in 1968. 

Arsenault,  Freedom Riders , 2006.

“Bi-Racial Group Cancels Bus Trip,”  New York Times , 16 May 1961.

Carson,  In Struggle , 1981.

Garrow,  Bearing the Cross , 1986.

King, Statement Delivered at Freedom Riders Rally at First Baptist Church, 21 May 1961,  MMFR .

Lewis,  Walking with the Wind , 1998.

Peck,  Freedom Ride , 1962.

Ross,  Witnessing and Testifying , 2003.

Williams to King, 31 May 1961, in  Papers  7:241–242 .

• Corrections

Freedom Rides of 1961: Challenging Segregation in the American South

The Freedom Rides of 1961 was a nonviolent protest campaign that challenged the segregation of interstate travel facilities by riding interstate buses through the Deep South.

Despite the US Supreme Court decision that deemed segregation in specific facilities for interstate travelers unconstitutional in 1960, segregation laws in the Deep South were still strongly enforced. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized the Freedom Rides of 1961 to challenge the federal government to take a stand and intervene as Jim Crow laws still ruled over the South.

Organizing the Freedom Rides of 1961

An initial attempt of the Freedom Rides was made by CORE in 1947 after the 1946 Morgan v. Virginia case deemed segregation in interstate transportation unconstitutional. However, the campaign, known as the Journey of Reconciliation, was not very successful as it did not receive the national media attention it needed to support the protest’s goals. In the midst of various Civil Rights Movement protests, CORE decided it was time to launch the new Freedom Rides of 1961 campaign.

The Freedom Riders planned to leave from Washington DC on May 4, 1961 to take a 13-day interstate bus trip down through the southern states. The goal was to challenge the segregation of the interstate bus terminal facilities and see if the southern states would integrate while they visited major cities throughout the South. The Riders were divided into two groups: one group rode on a Trailways bus, while the other rode on a Greyhound bus.

Before the Riders left for their trip, they participated in training that involved role-play so they were prepared for the type of behaviors they would face when encountering angry segregationists. An itinerary was created for the trip with New Orleans, Louisiana as the final destination. Once the Riders reached New Orleans, they planned on holding a rally that would also celebrate the seventh anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Who Were the Freedom Riders?

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The Freedom Riders was an interracial group that consisted of student and civil rights activist volunteers. The original group of the 1961 Freedom Riders included 13 civil rights activists from varying backgrounds. James Farmer was the director of CORE and led the first group of Freedom Riders. Some of the members included John Lewis, James Peck, Genevieve Hughes Houghton, and Mae Francis Moultrie. More riders joined throughout the campaign.

James Peck was the only member of the original group who also participated in the Journey of Reconciliation campaign in 1947, including civil rights leader Bayard Rustin . As the Freedom Rides of 1961 began to gain national attention, more activists became inspired to join in the campaign. Many activists were students who sacrificed graduating from college in order to participate.

Freedom Riders Meet Violence in the Deep South

The first few stops in Richmond, Virginia and Greensboro, North Carolina went well for the Riders. Some of the Riders had hopes that residents in the areas they stopped would integrate facilities while they were there, and some did. However, once they reached Rock Hill, South Carolina and traveled further south, violence became a common welcoming from angry white mobs.

While stopped at the Greyhound bus terminal in Rock Hill, John Lewis attempted to sit in a “whites-only” waiting room and was beaten by a mob. Martin Luther King met with the Riders during their journey in Atlanta, Georgia. He allegedly told one of the reporters traveling with the Riders, Simeon Booker, they would “ never make it through Alabama .”

The statement made by King held some truth. The Greyhound bus was met by an angry white mob upon their arrival in Anniston, Alabama on May 14, 1961. Once the bus came to a stop, the mob attacked the bus and slashed the tires. When the bus tried to drive away, a car zig-zagged in front of it to try and slow them down until the bus was forced to stop due to the flat tires.

The mob approached the bus again and began breaking the windows before throwing a firebomb in from the back window. The bus quickly became engulfed in flames with the passengers still inside, choking on the thick smoke. Once the Riders could burst through the front doors, they fled out of the bus only to be met with beatings by the mob. A state trooper eventually arrived, firing a single shot in the air to disperse the crowd.

Brutality Continues in Birmingham, Alabama

The Trailways bus managed to make it to Birmingham, Alabama, which was expected to be one of the most dangerous stops on the trip. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) of Alabama put out an announcement about the Freedom Rides of 1961 and managed to rally hundreds of segregationists for the Riders’ arrival. By this time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was well aware of the violence that had taken place in Anniston but did not intervene.

When the Trailways bus stopped at the Birmingham Trailways Station on May 15, a massive brawl broke out. The Riders were severely beaten, and many were hospitalized. When they were released from the hospital the following day, they could not find a bus driver willing to drive them to Montgomery and were stranded. The violence in Alabama was covered by national media outlets, forcing federal authorities to intervene. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy called on his special assistant, John Seigenthaler, to travel to Birmingham to help the Riders get out of Alabama.

Seigenthaler coordinated with the airlines to allow the Riders to quickly board a flight to New Orleans. The Riders thought that the Freedom Rides of 1961 were over as they were unable to reach Montgomery, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi. However, student activists from Nashville and surrounding areas were following the events of the Freedom Riders and decided to join the campaign to complete the trip.

Federal & State Officials Failed to Support the Freedom Riders

The Kennedy administration and federal officials were heavily criticized for their lack of enforcement of the new federal laws in the Deep South . John F. Kennedy was more focused on the Cold War at the time and found the Civil Rights Movement to be an afterthought. The only reason the federal government got involved in the Freedom Rides of 1961 was due to the news coverage that led the events of the rides to gain attention internationally. The lack of federal law enforcement became an embarrassment for John F. Kennedy and his administration.

The Alabama Governor, John Peterson, failed to take action when violence first erupted when the Greyhound bus was attacked in Anniston. The FBI’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, refused to allow agents to get involved and ordered them only to observe the events that took place during the Freedom Rides. He was fully aware of the KKK riot that was waiting for the Freedom Riders in Birmingham, Alabama and did not relay this information to Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Hoover had no desire to use FBI resources to help de-escalate the riots in the Deep South.

Robert F. Kennedy was responsible for sending special assistant John Seigenthaler to help the Freedom Riders get out of Birmingham and to New Orleans. He also proposed the ban of segregation on interstate buses and facilities in September, which would take effect two months later.

Second Wave of the 1961 Freedom Rides

Student civil rights activists in Nashville, Tennessee refused to let the violent segregationist mobs immobilize the Freedom Rides of 1961. Diane Nash and other university students organized to send reinforcements to Montgomery to finish the Freedom Rides of 1961. Nash was the coordinator of the group, and ten volunteers were selected.

Seigenthaler received word that more Freedom Riders were on their way to Alabama. He contacted Nash to convince her to call off the campaign and warned her of the dangers the Riders would face upon their arrival. Nash responded by telling Seigenthaler they were aware of the consequences and had signed their last will and testament before departing.

The Nashville Freedom Riders’ trip ended when they were immediately arrested upon arrival in Jackson, Mississippi. Several reinforcements of Riders followed, who were also arrested and sent to the Parchman State Penitentiary . Despite the arrests, activists who were inspired by the original Riders and those who left out of Nashville decided to follow their lead. Some of the Riders saw the arrests as an opportunity to flood the jails in Mississippi and put a strain on the state’s resources needed to hold all of the Riders.

Successes of the Freedom Rides of 1961

The Freedom Rides of 1961 was one of the most successful nonviolent protest campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. The Freedom Riders were able to get the attention of national media outlets and gain further support for the movement. The Rides forced the Kennedy administration to acknowledge the violence that civil rights activists were facing in the Deep South. Other countries were appalled to see that the US government was failing to enforce the policies that officials had implemented.

The Freedom Rides of 1961 resulted in the ban of segregation laws in interstate travel facilities, including buses, restrooms, water fountains, and lunch counters. The Interstate Commerce Commission officially banned segregation of interstate travel facilities within their jurisdiction on November 1, 1961. This was a major stepping stone in the Civil Rights Movement, as the Freedom Rides took place just three years before segregation would be outlawed in all public facilities upon the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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By Amy Hayes BA History w/ English minor Amy is a contributing writer with a passion for historical research and the written word. She holds a BA in history from Old Dominion University with a concentration in English. Amy grew up in the historic state of Virginia and quickly became fascinated by the intricate details of how people, places, and things came to be. She specializes in topics on American history, Ancient and Medieval England, law, and the environment.

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Freedom Riders

Written by: Bill of Rights Institute

By the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from 1960 to 1980

Suggested Sequencing

Use this narrative with The March on Birmingham Narrative; the Black Power Narrative; the Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 1963 Primary Source; the Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963 Primary Source; the Civil Disobedience across Time Lesson; the The Music of the Civil Rights Movement Lesson; and the Civil Rights DBQ Lesson to discuss the different aspects of the civil rights movement during the 1960s.

After World War II, the civil rights movement sought equal rights and integration for African Americans through a combination of federal action and local activism. One specific area the movement attempted to change was the segregation of interstate travel. In Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946), the Supreme Court had ruled that segregated seating on interstate buses was unconstitutional, but the ruling was largely ignored in southern states.

In 1960, the Supreme Court followed up on its earlier decision and ordered the integration of interstate buses and terminals. In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which had been formed in 1942, appointed a new national director, James Farmer. Farmer’s idea for a freedom ride to desegregate interstate buses was inspired by the college students who had launched the recent spontaneous and nonviolent sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters, starting in Greensboro, North Carolina. These sit-ins had soon spread to 100 cities across the South. Farmer decided to have an interracial group ride the buses from Washington, DC, to New Orleans to commemorate the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education case.

James Farmer was a leader in the civil rights movement and, in 1961, helped organize the first freedom ride.

Members of CORE sent letters to President Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover, the chair of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the president of the Greyhound Corporation announcing their intentions to make the ride and hoping for protection. CORE decided to move forward despite receiving no response.

The 13 recruits underwent three days of intensive training in the philosophy of nonviolence, role playing the difficult situations they could expect to encounter. On May 4, 1961, six of the riders boarded a Greyhound bus and seven took a Trailways bus, planning to ride to New Orleans. The riders knew they would face racial epithets, violence, and possibly death. They hoped they had the courage to face the trial nonviolently in their fight for equality.

The riders challenged the segregated bus seating, with black participants riding in the “white” sections and riders of both races using segregated lunch counters and restrooms in the Virginia cities of Fredericksburg, Richmond, Farmville, and Lynchburg, but no one seemed to care. After they crossed into North Carolina, one of the black riders was arrested trying to get a shoeshine at a whites-only chair in Charlotte but was soon released. The group faced physical violence for the first time in Rock Hill, South Carolina: John Lewis, a black college student; Albert Bigelow, an older white activist; and Genevieve Hughes, a young white woman, were all assaulted before they were rushed to safety by a local black pastor. Two more riders were arrested and released in Winnsboro, and two riders had to interrupt the ride for other commitments, but four new riders joined.

On May 6, while the rides continued, the attorney general delivered a major civil rights address promising that the Kennedy administration would enforce civil rights laws. Though he seemed more concerned with America’s image abroad during the Cold War, he stated that the administration “will not stand by and be aloof.” The freedom rides presented an opportunity for the attorney general to fulfill that promise.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy was a supporter of enforcing federal civil rights laws. He spoke to CORE in 1963, outside the Justice Department in Washington, DC.

In Augusta and Atlanta, Georgia, the riders ate at desegregated lunch counters and sat in desegregated waiting rooms. They were discovering that different communities throughout several southern states had different racial mores. They met with Martin Luther King Jr., who shared intelligence he had about impending violence in Alabama. A Birmingham police sergeant, Tom Cook, and the public safety commissioner, Bull Connor, were in league with the local Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which was planning a violent reception for the riders in that city. Cook and Connor had agreed that the mob could beat the riders for about 15 minutes before they would send the police and make a show of restoring order. The FBI had informed the attorney general, but neither acted to protect the riders or even to inform them of what awaited them.

The Greyhound bus departed Atlanta on the morning of May 14. The first group reached a stop in Anniston, Alabama, where an angry mob of whites armed with guns, bats, and brass knuckles surrounded the bus. Two undercover Alabama Highway Patrol officers on the bus quickly locked the doors, but members of the crowd smashed its windows. The Anniston police temporarily restored order and the bus left, trailed by 30 to 40 cars that then surrounded it and forced it to stop. Suddenly, a member of the crowd hurled flaming rags into the bus, and it exploded into flames. The riders climbed out through windows and the doors, barely escaping with their lives. The mob assaulted them and used a baseball bat on the skull of a young black male, Hank Thomas, before an undercover officer fired his gun into the air and a fuel tank exploded, dispersing the crowd. The riders went to the hospital, where they were refused care and were driven in activists’ cars to Birmingham.

A Greyhound bus carrying freedom riders was firebombed by an angry mob while in Anniston, Alabama, in 1961. Forced to evacuate, the passengers were then assaulted. (credit: “Freedom Riders Bus Attack” by Federal Bureau of Investigation)

The riders on the Trailways bus were terrorized by KKK hoodlums who boarded in Atlanta. At first, the white supremacists merely taunted the riders with warnings about the violence that awaited them in Birmingham, but when the riders sat in the white section of the bus, horrific violence erupted. Two riders were punched in the face and knocked to the floor where they were repeatedly kicked and beaten into unconsciousness. Two other riders tried to intervene peacefully and suffered the same fate. They were dragged to the back of the bus and dumped there.

Bull Connor carried out his plan not to post officers at the Birmingham bus station, with the excuse that it was Mother’s Day. Consequently, another large mob awaited the riders and forced them off the bus and assaulted them. Riders Ike Reynolds and Charles Person were knocked down and bloodied by a series of vicious blows. An older white rider, Jim Peck, was struck in the head several times, opening a wound that required 53 stitches. Peck later told a reporter that he endured the violence courageously to “show that nonviolence can prevail over violence.” The police finally showed up after the allotted 15 minutes but made no arrests. Other riders escaped, and they all met at Reverend Fred Shuttleworth’s church.

Americans across the country learned about the violence as the images of burning buses and beaten riders were broadcast on television and printed in newspapers. President Kennedy was preparing for a foreign summit and wanted the freedom riders to stop causing controversy. Attorney General Kennedy tried to persuade the Alabama governor, John Patterson, to protect the riders but was frustrated in the attempt. Also exasperated by Greyhound’s unwillingness to provide a new bus for the riders, the attorney general sent one federal official, John Seigenthaler, to the riders in Birmingham.

The riders planned to go to Montgomery and continue to New Orleans but could not find a bus. They reluctantly settled on flying to their final destination but had to wait out bomb threats before quietly boarding a flight. Although the CORE freedom ride was over, Diane Nash, a black student at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, was inspired by their example. She coordinated additional freedom rides to desegregate interstate travel, which immediately proceeded from Nashville to Birmingham to finish the ride.

On Wednesday, the new group of riders were met at the Birmingham terminal by the police, who quickly arrested them. The riders went on a hunger strike in jail and were dumped on the side of the road more than 100 miles away in Tennessee before sunrise on Friday. However, they simply drove back to Birmingham, where they attempted to board a bus for Montgomery, but the terrified driver refused to let them on. The Kennedy administration negotiated a settlement in which the state police were to protect the bus bound for Montgomery.

The bus pulled into the Birmingham station, but the police cars disappeared. The freedom riders faced another horrendous scene: a crowd armed with bricks, pipes, baseball bats, and sticks yelling death threats. A young white man, Jim Zwerg, stepped off the bus first and was dragged down into the mob and knocked unconscious. Two female riders were pummeled, one by a woman swinging a purse and repeatedly hitting her in the head, the other by a man punching her repeatedly in the face.

Seigenthaler attempted to rescue the women by putting them into his car and driving away, but he was dragged from the car and knocked unconscious with a pipe and kicked in the ribs. A young black rider, William Barbee, was beaten into submission with a baseball bat and suffered permanent brain damage. A black bystander was even set afire after having kerosene thrown on him. The mayhem ended when a state police officer fired warning shots into the ceiling of the station. All the riders needed medical attention and were rushed to a local hospital.

That night, Martin Luther King Jr. came to Montgomery. Protected by a ring of federal marshals, King addressed a mass rally at First Baptist Church. He told the assembly, “Alabama will have to face the fact that we are determined to be free. The main thing I want to say to you is fear not, we’ve come too far to turn back . . . We are not afraid and we shall overcome.” Meanwhile, a white riot had erupted outside the church, and congregants spent the night inside.

A compromise was worked out two days later to get the riders out of Alabama and send them to Mississippi. A total of 27 freedom riders boarded the buses safely, accompanied by the Alabama National Guard, which, to the riders, defeated the purpose of challenging segregated seating on the bus. They were all arrested in Jackson in the bus depot for violating segregation statutes and were taken to jail. In the coming weeks, additional rides were made, but all suffered the same fate and more than 80 riders landed in jail under deplorable conditions.

Freedom riders Priscilla Stephens, from CORE, and Reverend Petty D. McKinney, from Nyack, New York, are shown after their arrest by the police in Tallahassee, Florida, in June 1961.

During the summer, the national media and many Americans lost interest in the freedom rides. A Gallup Poll in mid-June showed that a majority of Americans supported desegregated interstate travel and the use of federal marshals to enforce it. However, 64 percent of Americans disapproved of the rides after initial expressions of sympathy, and 61 percent thought civil rights should be achieved gradually instead of through direct action.

The civil rights movement was undeterred by such popular opinion. The 1960 Greensboro sit-ins and the 1961 freedom rides created a new momentum in the struggle for equal rights and freedom. Over the next few years, civil rights activists directly confronted segregation through nonviolent tactics at places like Birmingham and Selma to arouse the national conscience and to pressure the federal government for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Review Questions

1. The freedom rides in 1961 were most directly inspired by

• the lunch counter sit-ins started in Greensboro, North Carolina
• the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education
• the Supreme Court’s decision in Morgan v. Commonwealth
• the formation of the Congress of Racial Equality

2. Freedom riders from the early 1960s were best known for

• inciting violent protests against urban policing policies
• providing transportation to those participating in the Montgomery bus boycott
• boycotting travel on segregated buses across the South
• challenging segregated seating on interstate bus routes

3. Response to the freedom riders as they travelled throughout the South illustrated

• uniformly violent opposition to their actions
• varied racial attitudes and reactions on the part of southerners
• widespread indifference
• local support and public mobilization of the black community

4. The freedom riders encountered the most violent reactions to their methods in

• Lynchburg, Virginia
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Birmingham, Alabama

5. The federal government’s response to the freedom rides was characterized generally by

• overwhelming support, including federal protection of the riders
• the full support of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy, but not of Congress
• observation and information gathering but limited actual support
• official training in nonviolent tactics but little overt support

6. Compared with earlier tactics in the movement, in the early 1960s, new civil rights groups advocated greater emphasis on

• taking direct action
• working through the federal court system
• inciting violent revolution
• electing local officials sympathetic to their cause

7. The actions of the freedom riders most directly contributed to the

• Brown v. Board of Education decision
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• election of President John F. Kennedy

Free Response Questions

• Explain how the freedom riders of the early 1960s drew upon the U.S. Constitution to justify their actions.
• Explain how the freedom rides of the early 1960s represented an evolution in the methods of the civil rights movement.

AP Practice Questions

1. The events in the image most directly led to

• a Supreme Court decision declaring segregation unconstitutional
• increased support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• the development of the counterculture
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s becoming a civil rights leader

2. The event in the photograph contributed to which of the following?

• Debates over the role of government in American life
• An increase in public confidence in political institutions
• Domestic opposition to containment
• The abandonment of direct-action techniques to achieve civil rights

3. The event in the image was most directly shaped by

• the techniques and strategies of the anti-war movement
• desegregation of the armed forces
• a desire to achieve the promise of the Fourteenth Amendment
• Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program

Primary Sources

James Farmer: letters to President John Kennedy. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum . 1961. https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/education/students/leaders-in-the-struggle-for-civil-rights/james-farmer

Suggested Resources

Arsenault, Raymond. Freedom Rides: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

Chafe, William. Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Graham, Hugh Davis. The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Lawson, Stephen F., and Charles Payne. Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968 . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.

Salmond, John A. “My Mind Set on Freedom:” A History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 . Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997.

Stern, Mark. Calculating Visions: Kennedy, Johnson, and Civil Rights . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Related Content

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

Civil Rights Movement

Freedom Riders

Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.

Boynton outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955) that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel. The ICC failed to enforce its ruling, and Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.

The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. They called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, and other alleged offenses, but often they first let white mobs attack them without intervention.

The Supreme Court's decision in Boynton supported the right of interstate travelers to disregard local segregation ordinances. Southern local and state police considered the actions of the Freedom Riders to be criminal and arrested them in some locations. In some localities, such as Birmingham, Alabama, the police cooperated with Ku Klux Klan chapters and other white people opposing the actions, and allowed mobs to attack the riders.

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How the Freedom Riders Movement Began

This group of civil rights activists made history

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• M.A., English and Comparative Literary Studies, Occidental College
• B.A., English, Comparative Literature, and American Studies, Occidental College

In 1961, men and women from throughout the nation arrived in Washington, D.C., to end Jim Crow laws  on interstate travel by embarking on what were called “Freedom Rides.”

On such rides, racially mixed activists traveled together throughout the Deep South—ignoring signs marked “For Whites” and “For Colored” in buses and bus terminals. The riders endured beatings and arson attempts from white supremacist mobs, but their struggles paid off when segregationist policies on interstate bus and rail lines were struck down.

Despite these achievements, the Freedom Riders aren’t the household names like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., but they are civil rights heroes nonetheless. Both Parks and King would be heralded as heroes for their roles in ending segregated bus seating in Montgomery, Ala. 

How They Started

In the 1960 case Boynton v. Virginia , the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional. Yet segregation on interstate bus and rail lines in the South persisted.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights group, sent seven Blacks and six whites on two public buses headed for the South on May 4, 1961. The goal: to test the Supreme Court ruling on segregated interstate travel in the former Confederate states.

For two weeks, the activists planned to flout Jim Crow laws by sitting on the front of buses and in “whites only” waiting rooms in bus terminals.

“Boarding that Greyhound bus to travel to the Deep South, I felt good. I felt happy,” Rep. John Lewis recalled during a May 2011 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Then a seminary student, Lewis would go on to become a U.S. congressman from Georgia.

During the first few days of their trip, the mixed-race group of activists traveled largely without incident. They didn’t have security and didn’t need it—yet.

But on May 12, Lewis, another Black Freedom Rider and a white Freedom Rider named Albert Bigelow, were beaten when they tried to enter a whites-only waiting area Rock Hill, South Carolina.

After arriving in Atlanta on May 13, they attended a reception hosted by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But the celebration took on a decidedly ominous tone when King alerted them that the Ku Klux Klan was organizing against them in Alabama.

Despite King’s warning, the Freedom Riders did not change their course. As expected, when they reached Alabama, their journey took a turn for the worse.

A Perilous Journey

On the outskirts of Anniston, Alabama, members of a white supremacist mob showed just what they thought about the Freedom Riders by bashing in their bus and slashing its tires.

To boot, the Alabama Klansmen set the bus on fire and blocked the exits to trap the Freedom Riders inside. It wasn’t until the bus’ fuel tank exploded that the mob dispersed and the Freedom Riders were able to escape.

After a similar mob attacked the Freedom Riders in Birmingham, the U.S. Justice Department stepped in and evacuated the activists to their destination of New Orleans, averting more potential injury.

The Second Wave

Due to the amount of violence inflicted on Freedom Riders, the leaders of CORE were faced either with abandoning the Freedom Rides or continuing to send activists into harm’s way. Ultimately, CORE officials decided to send more volunteers on the rides.

Diane Nash, an activist who helped to organize Freedom Rides, explained to Oprah Winfrey:

“It was clear to me that if we allowed the Freedom Ride to stop at that point, just after so much violence had been inflicted, the message would have been sent that all you have to do to stop a nonviolent campaign is inflict massive violence.”

On the second wave of rides, activists journeyed from Birmingham to Montgomery, Alabama in relative peace. Once the activists reached Montgomery, though, a mob of more than 1,000 attacked them.

Later, in Mississippi, Freedom Riders were arrested for entering a whites-only waiting room in a Jackson bus terminal. For this act of defiance, authorities arrested the Freedom Riders, housing them in one of Mississippi’s most notorious correctional facilities—Parchman State Prison Farm.

“The reputation of Parchman is that it’s a place that a lot of people get sent ... and don’t come back,” former Freedom Rider Carol Ruth told Winfrey. During the summer of 1961, 300 Freedom Riders were imprisoned there.

Inspiration Then and Now

The struggles of the Freedom Riders garnered nationwide publicity.

Rather than intimidate other activists, however, the brutality the riders encountered inspired others to take up the cause. Before long, dozens of Americans were volunteering to travel on Freedom Rides. In the end, an estimated 436 people took such rides.

The efforts of the Freedom Riders were finally rewarded when the Interstate Commerce Commission decided on Sept. 22, 1961, to ban segregation in interstate travel. Today, the contributions the Freedom Riders made to civil rights are the subject of a PBS documentary called Freedom Riders .

In 2011, 40 students commemorated the Freedom Rides of 50 years before by boarding buses that retraced the journey of the first set of Freedom Riders.

• Civil Rights Movement Timeline From 1960 to 1964
• The Black Struggle for Freedom
• Understanding Jim Crow Laws
• Civil Rights Movement Timeline From 1951 to 1959
• Civil Rights Legislation and Supreme Court Cases
• Black History from 1950–1959
• Congress of Racial Equality: History and Impact on Civil Rights
• Montgomery Bus Boycott Timeline
• Quotes From Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks
• Important Cities in Black History
• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Role in Civil Rights
• Biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights Leader
• Biography of John Lewis, Civil Rights Activist and Politician
• Biography of Diane Nash, Civil Rights Leader and Activist
• Black History and Women's Timeline: 1950–1959
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Did Not End the Movement for Equality

Thursday , May 14 , 2020

We were prepared to die: freedom riders.

Fifty-nine years ago, the Freedom Rides of 1961 entered the state of Alabama. Potential violence awaited in Anniston and Birmingham. Below, the backstory of how the Freedom Rides began and how one of the most pivotal protests in the Civil Rights Movement came about. While we know the names of notable activists like James Lawson and Diane Nash, there are numerous overlooked details behind the scenes of this epic event.

The Freedom Riders story began fifteen years earlier in 1946 when Irene Morgan, an African American woman was arrested for opposing segregation in interstate travel. She took her case to the United States Supreme Court and won. The following year, the first Freedom Ride, then known as the Journey of Reconciliation, tested the Supreme Court ruling but gained little coverage. James Farmer and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to begin the Freedom Rides again to test the fourteen-year-old case when President John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960. Civil Rights organizations wanted to see if the new administration would enforce the federal laws in the south. The Freedom Rides were set to begin with thirteen CORE activists in Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961 and their goal was to reach New Orleans on May 17, which would have been the seven-year anniversary of the Brown V. Board of Education ruling. 

The Freedom Riders faced little resistance in the Upper South. However, when two buses arrived in Atlanta on May 14 and departed for Birmingham Alabama, history changed forever.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, a known opponent of the Civil Rights Movement, informed the Birmingham Police Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor of the itinerary of the Freedom Riders arriving in the city. At the time it was viewed as a warning to Connor, but today, we see it as a tip to incite violence upon the Freedom Riders.

The entire world watched in anguish at the violence that took place in Alabama. The Kennedy Administration was concerned and asked for a cooling off period. Diane Nash of SNCC responded that “despite the violence, the Freedom Ride must continue.” The destination was Mississippi.

Kennedy called Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett to strike a deal behind the scenes unbeknownst to the public. Instead of ordering the Governor to enforce the federal law integrating interstate travel, Mississippi authorities agreed that there would be no violence and no mob, but would arrest and transport the Freedom Riders once they arrived at the terminal in Jackson, Mississippi. 

Governor Barnett would privately say, “We don’t want to break their bones. We only want to break their spirits.”

The Freedom Riders at Parchman experienced psychological torture for up to sixty days at a time. They were sent off to chain gangs, beaten by prison guards, and were forced to live under extreme inhumane conditions. Some Freedom Riders would be placed in a cells only a few feet away from the execution chamber on death row. As barbaric as Parchman was, hundreds of volunteers still took the Freedom Ride and were sent to Parchman. By July 1961, more than 300 Freedom Riders were incarcerated at one time. 

The Freedom Rides were the first nationally known interracial civil rights demonstration in the South.  As more and more volunteers took the Freedom Ride into the South, the Kennedy Administration slowly evolved into an ally for the Civil Rights Movement. Later that year, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission and filed a petition to end segregation in interstate travel. It was declared unconstitutional on November 1, 1961.

The Freedom Riders were victorious. The legacies of the Freedom Riders changed the world and inspired others to end racial discrimination in public life and will never be forgotten.

John Lewis would become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Joan Trumpauer Mulholland would receive the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award and Wyatt Tee Walker would go on to become a high-ranking member of the SCLC and be responsible as one of the architects behind the Albany and Birmingham campaigns.  Today we continue to preserve the stories, commemorate the events, and continue the journey for reconciliation for the ideals of freedom and justice for all citizens across the globe. 

Stay tuned for our next blog next week documenting the profiles of unsung Freedom Rider participants. Also, visit our social media channels @ncrmuseum for profiles of more courageous Freedom Riders.

Arsenault, Raymond. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Oxford University Press, 2007.  

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