Freedom is the ability to make contact with other races, speak and act regardless of skin color, and most of all, sit where you want on public transportation without being penalized. Before 1961, public transportation was segregated immensely among the races. Colored people, regardless of sex, were looked down upon for their skin and couldn’t mix with the whites. Instead, whites were treated as royalty. Colored people had to give up their seats for the “higher” race, stand up when there were no seats. African Americans were harassed and assaulted on buses eminently. In the article, “Freedom Riders end racial segregation in Southern U.S. public transit, 1961,” researched by Gavin Musynske, he proves how both the African American and white came …show more content…
International pressure was pressed onto John F. Kennedy for a racial change in the United States, at the time most southern state politicians were rallying together to boycott the new ruling by the supreme court. In the other spectrum CORE leaders have hit a dead end in the road; with no bus company willing to provide a bus nor a bus driver for the freedom riders, the freedom riding pan was shut down entirely. However, not until a few activists from the SNCC orchestrated a new group of freedom riders, now consisting of ten students to continue the freedom ride where it has been ended. The new freedom riders were to continue to move the burning flames of liberty toward their final destination of New Orleans, no matter if it meant death and misery. As the new group assembled itself it began to gain nationwide attention faster than it assembled itself, and John F. Kennedy knew that another mob attack would ruin his career of being president and running for a second …show more content…
King called for protection by the states attorney’s office which responded quickly by dispatching federal marshals, but before arriving the state of Alabama governor, “declared martial law in the city and dispatched the National Guard to restore order” as stated in the article, “FEDERAL MARSHALS CALLED IN”. On May 24th, 1961 the freedom riders commenced their journey toward Jackson, Mississippi. A state heavily known to be difficult on minorities known for its injustice and cruelty, there once the freedom riders arrived there were greeted by over 700 hundred followers of the freedom riders, however they were not allowed to enter the waiting areas of the bus terminal. According to the article, “FEDERAL MARSHALS CALLED IN” it states, “those who attempted to use the whites-only facilities were arrested for trespassing and taken to the maximum-security penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi.” Now that the freedom riders were in the process of receiving a hearing for the so called crimes they’ve committed, they were not heard out for their defense instead during the hearings the judge turned his attention away from the riders and mandatorily sentenced the riders to thirty days in
Black liberation was stalled once again in 1961 and 1962, as white savagery reared its head again and black people were forced to deal with the reality that success was not inevitable, yet. Still more "sit-ins", "shoe- ins" were led to combat segregation in public places which were met with violent responses from some white people. These responses ranged from burning down a bus with black people to assaulting black passengers on a train car in Anniston. These racist white people also targeted other white people who were deemed as sympathizers to black struggle or "nigger lovers". Police refused to arrest the white aggressors and in some cases also refused to protect the black people. The Freedom Rides resulted in both losses and gains in the civil rights movement. People came to the realization that justice will not be won through merely trying to persuade Southern whites with peaceful protest but only "when
... throughout the South and the free schools for African Americans movement. The freedom rides also inspired black people in the south that were kept in isolation and fear due to political and economic bondage. Additionally, these freedom rides forced the media to uncover the true depths of southern racism to America at a time when the American government was busy testing its Nuclear Weapons after the Cold War. After five months of this nonviolent protest by the Freedom Riders and Nashville Student Movement, the federal government finally gave up in front of these activists. On September 22, 1961; the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ended the segregation in bus and rail stations eliminating the Jim Crow Law. The Congress of Racial Equality also became the most important active civil rights organization working for equal rights and justice for African Americans.
On May 4, 1961, the Freedom Riders left the safety of the integrated, northern city of Washington D.C. to embark on a daring journey throughout the segregated, southern United States (WGBH). This group of integrated white and black citizens rode together on buses through different towns to test the effectiveness of newly designed desegregation laws in bus terminals and areas surrounding them (Garry). Founded by the Congress of Racial Equality (Garry) , or CORE, the first two Freedom Ride buses included thirteen people as well as three journalists to record what would become imperative historical events in the Civil Rights Movement. This group of fifteen people would begin to emerge as an organization that would eventually reach 400 volunteers (WGBH). Those involved were mostly young, college students whose goal it was, as said by the CORE director James Farmer, to “…create a crisis so that the federal government would be compelled to enforce the law.” (Smith). But on their journey throughout these southern states, the Freedom Riders faced many challenges, threats, and dangers.
Gross, Terry. "Get On the Bus: The Freedom Riders of 1961." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
Well, On April 10, 1963, Bull Connor obtained an injunction barring the protests and subsequently raised bail bond for those arrested from $300 to $1,200. Fred Shuttles worth called the injunction a "flagrant denial of our constitutional rights" and organizers prepared to defy the order. The decision to ignore the injunction had been made during the planning stage of the campaign. The SCLC and myself had obeyed court injunctions in their Albany protests and reasoned that obeying them contributed to the Albany campaign's lack of success. In a press release they explained, "We are now confronted with recalcitrant forces in the Deep South that will use the courts to perpetuate the unjust and illegal systems of racial separation". Incoming mayor Albert Boutwell called the SCLC organizers and myself were "strangers" whose only purpose in Birmingham was "to stir inter-racial discord". Connor promised, "You can rest assured that I will fill the
It began on February 1, 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina when four black students seated themselves at the whites only lunch counter and refused to leave until they were served. After the first sit-in, it began happening all over the country and by the end of the year, 70,000 blacks staged sit-ins. Throughout this, over 3,600 people were arrested. This movement was successful, but it demonstrated non-violent protests. After this movement began, several organizations developed. Such programs include; The NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, CORE, and the Black Panthers. The NAACP stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, while the SNCC stands for the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. The SCLC stands for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who started a segregation protest traveling to Birmingham, Alabama who had the reputation of one of the most segregated cities in the United States. On May 2, 1963, over six hundred protesters were arrested, and the majority was teenage high schoolers. The next day, the police chief, Bull Conor, ordered his police officers to shoot the protestors with high-powered water hoses ordered their dogs to attack them. By the end of the march, only twenty people reached the City Hall. After the Birmingham demonstrations, the blacks gained support from the people from the North because they witnessed how violent the South was towards the black protestors. The CORE is for the Congress of Racial Equality and started the first series of Freedom Riders in May of 1961. They traveled on two interstate buses starting in Washington D.C. and traveling to New Orleans. The people who disagreed with this movement threw stones and burnt these traveling buses in order to show their dislikeness of the blacks. All of these programs promoted rights for African Americans. The Black Panthers was organized by the SNCC and became popular in the late 60's. It was founded in Oakland, California after they protested the bill that outlawed carrying loaded weapons in public.
The Freedom Rides took place in the early May, 1961 where two groups of students riding in integrated Greyhound buses would stop at rest stops and blacks would go into white only bathrooms and whites would go into black only bathrooms. These bus rides were supposed to start at Washington DC and go on straight through the Deep South. These students were trying to protest interstate segregation laws and put an end to them. The trip went smoothly at first, but later everything went south as one bus got burned and the people inside were beaten. The second bus was stopped not to long after and everyone onboard was beaten and put in a hospital. Neither bus made it to their destination but it did put an immense amount of attention on them as a multitude of people followed in their footsteps and over a hundred buses became dragged into a freedom ride. (A Time for Justice )This shows how much these students were willing to take as in being beaten without fighting back and it also shows the amount of dedication involved.
The focus of the video documentary "Ain't Scared of your Jails" is on the courage displayed by thousands of African-American people who joined the ranks of the civil rights movement and gave it new direction. In 1960, lunch counter sit-ins spread across the south. In 1961, Freedom Rides were running throughout the southern states. These rides consisted of African Americans switching places with white Americans on public transportation buses. The whites sat in the back and black people sat in the front of the public buses. Many freedom riders faced violence and defied death threats as they strived to stop segregation by participating in these rides. In interstate bus travel under the Mason-Dixon Line, the growing movement toward racial equality influenced the 1960 presidential campaign. Federal rights verses state rights became an issue.
Albany Movement- In 1961 Martin Luther King's third son Dexter Scott is born in the month of January. In December, Martin Luther King is invited to the Albany Movement in Albany from Dr, W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany movement. After king arrives to Albany, he joins the many members of the Albany Movement in protesting, and is soon arrested for protesting along with hundreds of other protesters. The city later banned Martin and his followers for protesting to make them stop. While King was in Albany, he learned about the Freedom Rides. the Freedom Rides were a campaign of bus trips from north to south. Some people slashed the riders tires, burning their own busses, the people on their busses attacked, and the rides continued, this was one of the things Martin did not support about the Freedom Rides. With the changes that the protests set on Albany, Albany would never be the same. King and the movement made a small victory in Albany, to them, this was still hope.
In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to sit in the Negro section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. Martin Luther King transformed a racial protest into a massive resistance movement in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s, the sit-in tactic was launched in Greensboro, North Carolina, when black college students insisted on service at a local lunch counter. "Freedom Riders" were sent to the South in 1961 by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to test and break down segregation laws.
The first group of Freedom Riders boarded a bus in Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961. Thirteen riders had been recruited. The planned trip would take them through Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and then across the Deep South to Louisiana. The group hoped to reach New Orleans on May 17. Each of the riders knew the dangers involved in participating. The first confrontation took place in a Greyhound bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Seven blacks attempted to enter a whites-only portion of the terminal. One of them, John Lewis, was attacked and beaten as local police watched. Through ...
...be enforced. Olds wrote, "The Freedom Riders were an integrated group of highly motivated, well-disciplined, dedicated people" and the Rides were "effective as a demonstrations of strength, a source of leverage for influential coalitions, and a means for focusing public attention on the issue of civil rights" (18). Those involved single-handedly expanded the freedoms of all African-American citizens to travel throughout the United States. During the rides, the civil rights struggle reached a level of intensity that even sit-ins had managed to avoid" but though times were turbulent, the rides were effective, furthering the advancement of the African American people (Arsenault 3).. Through the most violent and fearsome events, the Freedom Riders stood firm to their cause which led them to be one of the most influential and effective parts of the Civil Rights Movement.
A group of people risked their life to obtain equality for African Americans in the south. The Freedom Riders were a group of around 13 people. Most of them were African Americans but there were always a few white skinned people in the group as well. There was no set leader for the Freedom Riders. The Freedom Riders rode interstate buses into the Southern United States. The south was referred to as the most segregated part of the U.S. The main goal of the Freedom Riders was to desegregate and become “separate but equal.” They had also set out to defy the Jim Crow Laws. The Freedom Riders had a little bit of help from two court cases: Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia. These court cases ruled that it was unjust to enforce segregation on buses. This made it easier for the Freedom Riders. Just because the buses were desegregated didn’t make it easier for the Freedom Riders though they were harassed, beaten upon, and were called extremely rude and derogatory terms. The Freedom Riders took an alternative approach to protesting. No violence was used by the Freedom Riders whatsoever. This brought a question to mind: to ask the question what were the strategies of the Freedom Riders and how were they effective in the south. Were they successful? The Freedom Riders used strategies such as Sit INS in local bars, Non-violent protests and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and the lack of support from the officials. The Freedom riders were very successful in their attempts to decimate segregation in the south.
Stanley Nelson chronicles the journey of a group of individuals, known as the Freedom Riders, whom fought for the rights of African Americans to have the same amenities and access as the Caucasians. The purpose of the Freedom Rides was to deliberately violate the Jim Crow laws of the south that prohibited blacks and whites from mixing together on buses and trains. Expectedly, many of the Freedom Riders were beaten and the majority was imprisoned. This carried on for the majority of 1961 and culminated with the Interstate Commerce Commission issuing an order to end the segregation in bus and rail stations. Nelson encapsulates this entire movement in about two hours. At the end of the two hours, the viewer is emotionally tied to the riders. For the sake of this analysis, I will focus on a portion towards the end of the film that gives us a sense of what kind of emotions victory evoked from those vested in the Freedom Rides. Nelson’s pairing of music and song coupled with a mixture of pictures and footage provides great emphasis to the subject matter while emotionally connecting the viewer.
This movement started in centuries-long attempts by African slaves to resist slavery. After the Civil War, American slaves were given basic civil rights. However, even though these rights were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment, they were not federally enforced. The struggle these African-Americans faced to have their rights federally enforced carried into the next century. Through non-violent protests, the civil rights movement of the 1950 and 1960’s led to most public facilities being segregated by race in the southern states....