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The Freedom Riders started testing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Morgan v. Virginia that segregated bus seating was unconstitutional.
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Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, Claudette refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, AL and was dragged off the bus. Her case was later included in a federal lawsuit.
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She attended Fisk University where she spearhead The Nashville Student Movement that conducted a series of orchestrated sit-ins at lunch counters in downtown Nashville.
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A North Carolina A&T student, along with three college buddies, decided to sit down at the segregated lunch counter of the local Woolworth's and sparked a revolution.
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A Morehouse student began protesting sit-ins in Atlanta and later joined the first Freedom Rides.
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Under immense pressure, in the fall of 1961, the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Comission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals.
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A group of African Americans and white people organized this group to protest "white-only" restrooms and lunch counters in the Jim Crow South.
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The original group of 13 Freedom Riders-seven African Americans and six whites- left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus with the plans to reach New Orleans, LA. The group faced an angry all-white mob in Anniston, AL, where their bus was bombed, brutally beaten as they escaped the burning bus.
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Following widespread attention and pictures of the burning Greyhound, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy negotiated with Alabama's Governor to secure driver and state protection for the freedom Riders.
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Several hundred supporters from all over the south and north greeted the riders as they departed Montgomery for Jackson, MS. The rides continued over the next several months.