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Freedom Riders and The Civil Rights Movement
The Freedom Riders started testing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Morgan v. Virginia that segregated bus seating was unconstitutional. -
Claudette Colvin
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. -
Diane Nash
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. -
Joseph McNeil
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. -
Charles Person
A Morehouse student began protesting sit-ins in Atlanta and later joined the first Freedom Rides. -
Desegregating Travel
Under immense pressure, in the fall of 1961, the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Comission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals. -
Congess of Racial Equality (CORE)
A group of African Americans and white people organized this group to protest "white-only" restrooms and lunch counters in the Jim Crow South. -
Bloodshed In Alabama
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. -
Police Escort
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. -
Freedom Riders Supporters
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.