On May 4, 1961, 13 passengers – including 21-year-old seminary student John Lewis – boarded two buses in Washington, DC, bound for New Orleans. Their goal? Challenge and expose state laws that continued to enforce segregation on buses and in bus terminals despite the 1960 Boynton v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the segregation of interstate travel.
This was the first Freedom Ride organized by CORE (Congress of Racial Equality).
Their first confrontation with violent segregationists took place in Rock Hill, South Carolina. As the Freedom Riders tried to enter a “whites-only” waiting room in Rock Hill’s Greyhound terminal, John Lewis and others were assaulted by a mob of young white men.
The violence escalated further on a highway outside Anniston, Alabama, when one of the Freedom Ride buses was firebombed. When the Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus, they were attacked by a mob of white segregationists.
John Lewis was also on the Freedom Ride from Birmingham to Montgomery. Upon arriving at the Montgomery bus terminal, Freedom Riders were brutally attacked by a mob of over 200 Klansmen. John Lewis, William Barbee, and Jim Zwerg were beaten unconscious.
On May 23, John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. held a press conference in Montgomery, announcing that the Freedom Rides would continue despite the violent attacks they had suffered. In the photo, below, bandages can be seen on Lewis’s head from the beatings he had endured.
Hundreds of volunteers from across the country traveled to Mississippi to support the effort, committing their lives to nonviolent direct-action. That summer, a total of about 436 people – mostly ages 18 to 30 – participated in 60+ Freedom Rides. 90% were arrested.
About 300 Freedom Riders, including John Lewis, were sent to Mississippi’s notorious State Penitentiary at Parchman after being arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for trying to use a “Whites Only” restroom and charged with “breach of peace.” They were incarcerated under harsh conditions for 37 days.
Many Freedom Riders – including Lewis – adopted a resistance tactic called “Jail, No Bail,” refusing to pay bail. Staying in jail or prison enabled them to generate more media coverage, nationally and internationally, about the severity of segregation and discrimination African Americans continued to face in the South.
Finally, the newly-elected Kennedy Administration pressured the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to act. In September, the ICC required that interstate bus operators remove all “whites only” signs from bus terminals and report any interference with the 1960 Supreme Court ruling banning segregation on interstate travel. Violators were held accountable in federal courts.
The whole world had watched in horror as a Freedom Ride bus burst into flames outside Anniston and hundreds of young men and women, Black and white, from all over the country, were beaten and bloodied by mobs of cursing Klansmen.
In the end, shame spurred the federal government to finally take a stand, do what was right.
In this video, John Lewis explains the rationale of the Freedom Ride and what the riders endured:
This video is a little harder to watch:
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