Freedom Riders
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Civil Rights activists called Freedom Riders rode on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia, (1960). The first Freedom Ride left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.
Boynton v. Virginia had outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company which had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel, but the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling, and thus Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.
The Freedom Riders set out to challenge the status quo. The Riders consisted of African Americans and whites together riding various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses.
Most of the subsequent rides were sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) while others belonged to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced Snick). The Freedom Rides followed on the heels of dramatic "sit-ins" against segregated lunch counters conducted by students and youth throughout the South, and boycotts beginning in 1960.
The United States Supreme Court's decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances regarding interstate transportation facilities. But the Freedom Riders' rights were not enforced and were considered criminal acts throughout most of the South. For example, upon the Riders' arrival in Mississippi, their journey ended with imprisonment for exercising their legal rights in interstate travel, and similar arrests took place in other southern cities. Freedom Riders knew that they faced arrest by authorities determined to stop their protests and possible mob violence and before starting they committed themselves to a strategy of non-violent resistance. The riders borrowed this strategy from Gandhi, which has first been used in America by Martin Luther King Jr. during the bus boycott in Montgomery.
The Freedom Riders faced much resistance against their cause. Some Civil Rights advocates, including Thurgood Marshall, did not agree with the Freedom Riders direct action approach, and actually believed that the Ride would slow the civil rights process. However, ultimately they received strong support from people both inside and outside the South for their efforts.
