Description
In May 1961 two buses carrying activists working with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) left Washington and embarked upon what would become one of the vital events in the Civil Rights Movement, the Freedom Rides. Although the rides exploded in the public consciousness with outbreaks of violence in Birmingham and Montgomery, they were in fact the culmination of a number of trends in American history. Legal challenges to Jim Crow on interstate transport and its facilities dated to the 1800s. A series of court cases throughout the 20th century established the right of travelers to be able to ride, eat, and use other facilities as they saw fit irrespective of race. In 1947 CORE departed for a trip across the Upper South to test recent court decisions and to try to establish adherence to them. That trip, the Journey of Reconciliation, would serve as a model for the 1961 event that shocked the world. This project explores the challenges to Jim Crow on interstate transport and the facilities that various modes of transport used. It further provides an in-depth exploration of the Freedom Riders' experiences as they wound their way from Washington DC to the Deep South and as brave groups of students and other activists carried on the Freedom Rides when violent resistance caused the CORE group to abandon the journey before concluding the rides in Alabama and Mississippi on the way to New Orleans.
