User:Kawilke22/Freedom Riders

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The Freedom Riders were a group of African American civil rights activists who made their way around the country trying to spread equality but ultimately led to violence that our country will never forget. The term "Freedom Rides" composed a campaign that lasted seven months, involved over 400 participants and desegregated dozens of bus depots from Virginia to Texas.

The lives as a Freedom Rider
The Freedom Rides were mostly focused on events that occurred during the spring and summer of 1961. However, the idea of an interracial bus ride through the South, at a time when racial segregation was mandated in public transportation, originated in 1947. Bayard Rustin and George Houser, who were part of a civil rights organization called the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), came up with a plan to test whether southern long-distance buses were following a 1946 Supreme Court ruling that prohibited segregation on interstate travel.

"Yet the Freedom Rides, in plural, were just the beginning. The Alabama attacks, coupled with the Mississippi arrests, inspired multiple small bands of civil rights supporters from all over the continental United States to head southward too."explains Arsenault.

The riders in 1961 successfully completed their journey through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. However, they encountered violent and horrific situations in Alabama. A white segregationist mob attacked and burned one of the two buses they were traveling in outside Anniston. The second group of riders faced violence from Ku Klux Klansmen in Birmingham, while the city police deliberately held back.

The Freedom Rides had two important outcomes. Firstly, due to the pressure from Robert Kennedy's Justice Department, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which had regulatory power over interstate buses and terminals, declared an end to racial segregation in all waiting rooms and lunch counters, effective from November 1, 1961. Although not everyone immediately followed this rule, Arsenault points out that this directive sent a clear message to southern whites that desegregation of other institutions was likely to happen soon.

Many whites took this message as a sign of war.

The Persecution of the freedom riders
On Sunday morning, May 14, the Freedom Riders embarked on a journey from Atlanta in two buses that also accommodated regular passengers. However, the first bus was unable to reach Birmingham as it was attacked by a group of 200 men who wielded weapons such as chains, clubs, and pipes. The attackers hurled a firebomb through a rear window of the bus, and the Freedom Riders were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were mostly ignored until being instructed to leave. The bus was left completely destroyed, and this became the first memorable image of the Freedom Ride.

On the afternoon of that same Sunday, the second bus arrived at Birmingham's Trailways station, with James Peck as the captain of this leg. Peck, a 46-year-old descendant of the Peck & Peck New York retail family and one of the two Harvard alums on the ride, had participated in CORE'S 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, where he was surprised by the level of tolerance towards integration among drivers and passengers. However, fourteen years later, he faced a hostile group of white men in sports shirts, who carried lead pipes hidden in paper bags. Peck challenged them, declaring that they would have to kill him before hurting his fellow Freedom Riders. Despite his brave words, he was attacked and severely beaten by five men in an alley. The attackers used a Coke bottle, which was a typical weapon for southern vigilantes. Peck lost consciousness within seconds and needed 53 stitches to close his exposed skull. Meanwhile, inside the station, the Klansmen violently assaulted the Freedom Riders and anyone else who tried to stop them, including a news photographer who arrived at the scene.

Conclusion
At the end of the day the Freedom Riders were a group of courageous civil rights activists who challenged the segregation laws in the southern United States in the early 1960s. Despite facing violent attacks and arrests, they continued to ride buses and trains to demand equal treatment for all. Their actions brought national attention to the injustices of segregation and helped to pave the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.