Freedom Riders Research Paper

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The History of the Freedom Riders During the 1960s, the struggle for civil rights had become more defined than ever. Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a starkly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression (Staff, History.com, 2009). African Americans were commonly known as Coloreds, they were up against hard laws and white people that thought Coloreds’ were second-class to their race. The phrase “Jim Crow” was the name of the racial caste system that was predominately used in Southern states between the times of 1877 and middle of the 1960s (Staff, History.com, 2010). The “Jim Crow” laws from local and state level banded them from…show more content…
The purpose of the Freedom rides were aimed to help desegregate public places such as commercial buses and being able to ride throughout the South without any uproar. Traveling segregated was humiliating to blacks and they wanted that to come to an end. The Freedom Riders began in Washington, DC and they were on two different buses that would travel to the South. On May 4, 1961, those thirteen people embarked on their journey to the South. They would travel through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Eventually, the Freedom Riders would try to make it to New Orleans, Louisiana by May 17, 1961 in order to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Brown v. Board of Education case (Staff, History.com, 2009). As they were traveling and stopping at each bus terminal, the African Americans would try to use the “White Only” bathrooms, and even try to eat at their lunch counters and the whites would do the…show more content…
While traveling through Charlotte, North Carolina and Rock Hill, South Carolina some riders would get arrested. The first violent attack that they encountered was during their trip to Rock Hill, South Carolina (Staff, History.com, 2010). The riders that were attacked in Rock Hill were John Lewis, who was an African American and a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which was a civil rights organization and Albert Bigelow who was a Navy Veteran. They were attacked while they were trying to enter a “White Only” waiting area (Staff, History.com, 2010). The Riders continued to travel even after the terrible encounter they had. Once they reached Atlanta, Georgia they got a chance to meet one the greatest Civil Rights Leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and some riders would travel onto another bus. One of the buses that left Atlanta traveled to Anniston, Alabama was greeted by an angry white mob. They had seen the angry mob of two hundred people and decided to just drive past that terminal rather than be attacked. The angry mob was not satisfied with them just leaving, so the followed the bus, blew the tires out and then proceeded to throw a bomb into the bus. The Freedom Riders had to escape the bus when it started to go up in flames and then they were greeted right outside of the bus with brutal attacks from the mob
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