Remembering the Freedom Riders
Fifty years ago this month, a group of black and white volunteers boarded two public buses in the District of Columbia to travel into the Deep South, where segregated waiting rooms, restrooms, lunch counters and other indignities were a fact of life despite Supreme Court rulings striking down segregation in interstate travel.
These Freedom Riders would be followed by hundreds of others. Their mission was to nonviolently confront local laws and customs that perpetuated illegal segregation. Their aim was to jolt Americans’ consciousness and challenge the Kennedy administration to enforce African-Americans’ constitutional rights.
A new documentary on PBS stations captures the political complexities and drama of this pivotal chapter in civil rights history. Written and directed by Stanley Nelson, it is based on Raymond Arsenault’s 2006 book, “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.”
Fears that the integrated teams would meet with violence proved well founded. The first bus was attacked in the Alabama town of Anniston by a mob of Ku Klux Klansmen who slashed the tires and then firebombed the crippled vehicle. The mob first held the doors shut, and then beat passengers escaping the burning bus. When the second bus arrived in Birmingham, passengers were brutally attacked by another Klan mob.
The violence did not end the Freedom Rides. In all, more than 400 men and women participated. Many were arrested and ended up spending time at Mississippi’s bleak Parchman prison farm. In the end, they could claim victory. Acting at the request of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued a sweeping order in September 1961 ending segregation in all interstate facilities and calling for all “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs to come down.
Five decades later, injustices remain. But the country’s debt to the Freedom Riders is clear.
