Freedom Ride: CORE’s
1961 demonstration to
test whether interstate
transportation facilities
were desegregated, as the
Supreme Court required.
Journey of Reconciliation:
A 1947 CORE bus ride
through the upper South,
which was a prototype
for the more famous
Freedom Ride.
Boyntonv. Virginia(1960). CORE therefore organized a bus trip called the
Freedom Ridethat was patterned after its little-remembered Journey of
Reconciliationthrough the upper South in 1947. Like this earlier journey,
the Freedom Ride of 1961 would test compliance with a court decision
by sending an interracial group traveling through southern cities. The Ride
would go further and ignore ‘white’ and ‘colored’ signs hanging by toilets,
lunch-counters, and waiting rooms in the deep South. Moreover, if the
riders were arrested, they vowed to remain in jail to make Jim Crow prohibi-
tively expensive. ‘We planned the Freedom Ride,’ Farmer revealed, ‘with the
specific intention of creating a crisis. We were counting on the bigots in the
South to do our work for us. We figured that the government would have to
respond if we created a situation that was headline news all over the world.’
The two-week, 1,500-mile trip was to end in New Orleans on 17 May, the
anniversary of the Browndecision.
Farmer made elaborate preparations for the risky Freedom Ride. Because
CORE had a small budget, SCLC and NAACP branches would provide food
and lodging along the way. To ensure protection, Farmer forewarned the
federal government of his plans and enclosed a map outlining the journey’s
route. The Ride, he noted, was not civil disobedience, because segregated bus
stops were unconstitutional. President Kennedy, attorney general Robert
Kennedy, the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the bus
companies, ignored CORE’s correspondence and hoped that the demonstra-
tion would go away. FBI director J. Edgar Hooverpassed on the Ride’s
itinerary to Alabama officials, some of whom were known to be violent
klansmen.
On 4 May 1961, thirteen obscure CORE volunteers – seven black, six
white – set out from Washington in Greyhound and Trailways buses. To chal-
lenge prevailing custom, blacks sat in the front of the bus and whites in the
back. At first, the Ride experienced few difficulties. But when John Lewis, a
short, slightly-built veteran of the Nashville sit-ins, approached the white
waiting room in Rock Hill, South Carolina, hoodlums in leather jackets and
ducktail haircuts blocked his path. ‘Nigger, you can’t come in here,’ they
sneered. Lewis cited the Boyntondecision and tried to pass by, only to be
slugged and kicked until he fell to the ground, bleeding. When another rider,
Albert Bigelow, a Harvard-trained architect and ex-Navy captain, shielded
Lewis, the thugs attacked Bigelow until he collapsed. A policeman then told
the gang, ‘All right, boys. Y’all’ve done about enough now. Why don’cha all
go on home now?’
More bloodshed seemed likely in the klan state of Alabama. The long-
anticipated violence erupted on 14 May in Anniston, sixty miles east of
Birmingham. As the Greyhound bus pulled into the station, the driver yelled
to the mob of two hundred, ‘Well, boys, here they are. I brought you some64 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Hoover, J. Edgar(1895–
1972): FBI director who
warred on the civil rights
movement and black
nationalism.