Freedom Riders: Civil Rights, White Mobs, Firebombs and Beatings
Who Were the Freedom Riders?
Willing to sacrifice their physical safety as a challenge to the Supreme Court’s 1960 ruling in Boynton v. Virginia, which declared segregation inside interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional, a group of seven African Americans and six white civil rights activists set out on a bus ride from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, intending to use whites-only bathrooms, lunch counters and waiting rooms as a stress test for the new law.
The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina with little notice, but in Rock Hill South Carolina, three of the freedom riders, including future Congressman John Lewis were violently attacked as they entered a whites-only waiting area. Traveling on to Atlanta, the group divided their numbers onto two separate buses, and when the first group arrived in Anniston Alabama, a mob of 200 white haters harassed the bus in cars when the bus driver refused to enter the station.
Freedom Riders Firebombed and Beaten
After the tires were blown out, the Greyhound was firebombed, followed by brutal beatings for the freedom riders as they escaped the burning bus. The freedom riders on the Trailways bus met a similar fate in Birmingham, where they were beaten by a white mob brandishing metal pipes.
Even after newspaper images of bloodied riders and the torched bus caused outrage around the world, the re-united freedom riders saw violence yet again in Birmingham, where a white mob attacked the riders with baseball bats and clubs, prompting Attorney General Robert Kennedy to call in 600 federal marshals to quell the violence.
The following night, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a service at the First Baptist Church of Montgomery, where more than 1,000 came out in support of the freedom riders, and when another riot ensued outside the church, King called Robert Kennedy, requesting protection from angry white haters. Kennedy responded with more federal marshals, who used teargas to disperse the crowd of violent racists.
After the freedom riders left Birmingham by Greyhound, several hundred supporters greeted them upon their arrival in Jackson Mississippi, where any and all activists were arrested for trespassing after their attempts to enter whites-only facilities. The freedom rides were continued by copy-caters into the fall of 1961, spurred on by continued national and international attention, while the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations against segregated transit terminals, in response to steady pressure by the Kennedy administration, placing the freedom riders center stage against the lead foot of the Jim Crow South.