supported by whites attempted to travel through
the Southern states by bus. These Freedom Riders,
as they came to be called, many of them students,
were set upon and brutally attacked in the South,
and their buses were burnt. They were deliberately
challenging the Kennedy administration to pro-
tect their rights. Robert Kennedy, the attorney-
general, eventually provided federal protection
from mob violence but not from illegal arrest. He
was hoping to reach acceptable compromises in
the South when the time for such compromises
was long past. The efforts of the administration
were concentrated on civil rights legislation, above
all to prevent the debarring of black votes by intim-
idation and by spurious literacy requirements in
the Southern states. It was held up in Congress. In
August 1963 Martin Luther King and other black
leaders organised a great march on Washington of
200,000 people, both black and white, warning of
a ‘whirlwind of revolt’ if racial injustices were not
remedied. But the Kennedy administration had
drawn the sting of this protest by identifying itself
with the protesters.
Kennedy was undoubtedly persuaded of the
moral rightness of the black cause, but, though
he hated violence, he resented having the admin-
istration’s hand forced by black militancy. He felt
he could not act too far ahead of Congress or of
white opinion in the South. The process of edu-
cation was a gradual one – too gradual for the
African Americans. Kennedy’s modest civil rights
proposals were still held up in Congress on the
day of his death. Johnson then speedily pushed
them through with the help of Robert Kennedy,
who carried on as attorney-general. But violence
continued against the black people and the vol-
unteers from the north who were exercising their
rights to meet and protest. In Mississippi three
black and two white civil rights workers were
beaten to death.
The frustration of the African Americans was
aroused not merely by the hostility that prevented580 WHO WILL LIBERATE THE THIRD WORLD? 1954–68
The march on Washington, which took place on 28 August 1963, was an impressing and fitting culmination
of the campaign for civil rights. © akg-images