Freedom Rides

Theses Statement

The Freedom Rides, 1961 are an inspiring legacy of the civil rights movement in America to end discrimination against African Americans, and to end the racial segregation, especially in the southern United States.

Introduction

The eleven states of the Old Confederacy regulated the separation of the races from the cradle to the grave. Blacks were born in segregated hospitals and were buried in segregated cemeteries. Segregation was an idea carried to absurdity. In Southern Courthouse blacks and whites gave oath in separate Bibles, and in most Southern states, in ambulances for whites blacks were not allowed to transport to hospitals (Catsam, pp. 90). In North Carolina, it was illegal for white students to use the texts that were touched by black hands; in Georgia, it was illegal for a white baseball team to play in a field in less than two blocks away from where black teams played.

Freedom Riders

In 1961, 13 brave people, seven blacks and six whites, refused to accept this as "because, the way things are." They refused to be content to "look away", to "be patient” (Barnes, pp. 68). They understood the dangers and threats that they would fall on them. They could not care less what the "respectable society" thinks of them.

Instead, they entered a dangerous and volatile situation and began a journey that would change the course of history. On May 4, boarded two buses in Washington, DC they planned a trip that would take them across the South, ending in New Orleans on May 17. Every mile of this route, would violate the law and "customs" of the "Southern way of life." They would sit, black and white, side by side on the bus with black people in the front. Some black people enter the lobbies, restaurants and toilets, only meant for the white people (Arsenault, pp. 23). These were the first Freedom Riders.

In the early 1960's, a wave of seedlings in bars restaurants, to challenge and break the Jim Crow, spread across 100 cities and towns in the South. By the end of the year, the student leaders of black colleges in the South and some established civil rights organizations, including the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), seeking a way to confront and challenge Jim Crow segregation throughout the South (Bausum, pp. 121).

The first trip for Freedom became a drama of two weeks of escalating racist violence, and heroism to change the world. These original Freedom Riders were deeply committed to nonviolence. For some, joining Freedom Riders meant leaving school, although it was the first in family to attend college. And everyone knew they were risking their lives to challenge and into the jaws of the violence of Jim Crow (Barnes, pp. 68). Along the way, after facing mob violence they decided to continue again, even more determined to take a stand against injustice, even if it meant risking their life.

Alabama Racist Mobs

At the beginning of the trip, several travelers were attacked and beaten in Rock Hill, South Carolina when they ...