In 1961, a group of black and white activists, known as "Freedom Riders," planned to test whether or not commercial buses in the South were truly desegregated. You will now watch a video on the Freedom Rides and how they were used to test the South’s desegregation of public transportation.
Use what you learn from this video to organize the details. Click "Arrange It" below to organize tiles with details about the Freedom Rides and the activists who participated in them.
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As you watch this video, pay particular attention to the timeline of events that happened during the Freedom Rides. Then, after watching, complete the activity below.
BARBARA MCCASKILL, PhD:
The Freedom Rides are a dramatic moment that occurred at the peak of the civil rights era in 1961. A northern group of civil rights activists called CORE--the Congress of Racial Equality--decides to test this law by calling together activists of different ages, of different races, of different educational and economic backgrounds, and of different religions to travel together, sitting side-by-side on interstate buses from Washington D.C. all the way to the Deep South.
Initially, the rides went very well. They would walk in as an integrated group, violating the precepts of Jim Crow, and people wouldn't bother them. When they came to the Deep South, it was a different story.
So their ride stalled. They encountered hostile, violent, angry mobs. The federal government sends in its officials to help them get out of there and flies them to New Orleans.
DIANE NASH:
Do you feel that it's wrong to discriminate against a person solely on his race or color?
BARBARA MCCASKILL, PhD:
Diane Nash, who had led the Nashville sit-ins, heard about the Freedom Rides, heard about the trouble that the Freedom Riders had encountered, and she did not want the Freedom Rides to go down in the annals of history as a failure. She repeated the model of CORE, and they immediately encountered hostility again.
There's a notorious moment in Montgomery where the riders are badly beaten. The local African-American church has a mass meeting to call attention to this problem. Dr. King is flown in. A mob of thousands surrounds the church. Dr. King phones the attorney general, Robert Kennedy. And after a long series of telephone calls with the governor of Alabama, Robert Kennedy sends in the National Guard. The riders continue during this second round all the way to Jackson, Mississippi, with some degree of police protection.
In Jackson, Mississippi, they are promptly thrown in a notorious prison called Parchman. They practice nonviolence in those jails when the guards were violent toward them. And they modeled to the people in jail how serious the motivations of movement activists were and how transformative the movement was.
In the end, the attorney general changed the laws and interstate travel was finally really desegregated as a result of the Freedom Rides. So the Freedom Rides are a major success for the civil rights activists in the early 1960s.