A New Kind of Democracy? Political and Cultural Developments in the 1960s 407lems will not be solved until... the White House begins to shake and gets
on the phone and says, ‘Now listen, George, we’re coming down there and
throwing you in jail if you don’t stop that mess.’ It’s not just the sheriff of this
county or the mayor or the police commissioner or George Wallace. This
problem goes to the very bottom of the United States. And you know, I said
it to them and I will say it again. If we can’t sit at the table, let’s knock the
fucking legs off, excuse me.”
Officials in South Carolina and Alabama did not stop the freedom rides,
however, but simply looked the other way as White mobs attacked and
viciously beat the CORE members. The original riders, battered and injured,
then flew to New Orleans, but SNCC activists, led by John Lewis, now a mem-
ber of the House of Representatives from Georgia, traveled to Montgomery
to resume the rides. They too were immediately savaged as they stepped off
their bus. No police were in sight as the White mob grew to nearly 1000.
Finally, after three weeks of doing nothing despite calls from Black leaders for
help, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent 400 marshalls to Montgomery
to protect the riders, but also called on CORE and SNCC to end the rides
and “cool off.” They refused, with Farmer explaining that blacks “had been
cooling off for a hundred years. If we got any cooler, we’d be in a deep freeze.”
So the rides continued. Over 1000 Americans—northern and southern, Black
and White—participated, over 300 were arrested, and countless others were
intimidated and attacked. Finally, in late 1961, the Interstate Commerce
Commission banned segregation in interstate travel and most southern com-
munities began to comply with the laws in 1962. If Whites could be provoked
into violent responses to civil rights demonstrations, the freedom riders
proved, then the media would report on it and politicians would be pressured
to act. That scenario would only become more common as the struggle con-
tinued. Indeed, Blacks continued to defy authority and fill jails in 1962. In
Albany, Georgia, the main civil rights theater in 1962, 1 out of 20 African
Americans spent time behind bars, much to the satisfaction of Police Sheriff
Laurie Pritchett, who was fond of saying that he followed a policy of “mind
over matter” because Whites “didn’t mind” and Blacks “didn’t matter.”
Southern governors such as Ross Barnett of Mississippi and George Wallace
of Alabama believed likewise, and made defiant public stands against the
admission of black students into state universities.
Indeed, the struggle for civil rights would become more angry, and violent,