The Freedom Riders
Published on May 02, 2016
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Definition
- Freedom riders - a group of 13 African- Americans and white civil rights activists who stood up for racism and equality among others.
Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives
The beginning
- Began May'4, 1961
- organized by CORE
- to protest against racism and unequality
Photo by Kullez
Five Facts
- They were recruited by core
- They began the freedom rides on May'4, 1961
- The 1961 Freedom Rides, organized by CORE, were modeled after the organization’s 1947 Journey of Reconciliation
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Five Facts
- During the 1947 action, African-American and white bus riders tested the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Morgan v. Virginia that segregated bus seating was unconstitutional.
- Their plan was to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 17 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of the nation’s public schools was unconstitutional.
Photo by angela n.
Five facts
- CORE officials could not find a bus driver who would agree to transport the integrated group, and they decided to abandon the Freedom Rides. However, Diane Nash (1938-), an activist from the SNCC, organized a group of 10 students from Nashville, Tennessee, to continue the rides. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (1925-68), brother of President John F. Kennedy (1917-63), began negotiating with Governor John Patterson (1921-) of Alabama and the bus companies to secure a driver and state protection for the new group of Freedom Riders. The rides finally resumed, on a Greyhound bus departing Birmingham under police escort, on May 20.
- The following night, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-68) led a service at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, which was attended by more than one thousand supporters of the Freedom Riders. A riot ensued outside the church, and King called Robert Kennedy to ask for protection. Kennedy summoned the federal marshals, who used teargas to disperse the white mob. Patterson declared martial law in the city and dispatched the National Guard to restore order. On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders departed Montgomery for Jackson, Mississippi.
Photo by charlie cars
