How Did The Freedom Rides Impact The Civil Rights Movement

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During the summer of 1961, “a series of political protests against segregation by blacks and whites” (Encyclopædia Britannica) took place. Segregation is the act of separating people because of their race. Freedom rides were organized by different civil rights organizations, who believed segregation was wrong, to push for the desegregation of public transportation, terminals, and facilities. The Freedom Rides were acts of protest made to get national publicity and support for their cause. The Freedom Rides had a great impact on the Civil Rights Movement by directly leading to the desegregation of public interstate transportation, and less directly, by gaining mass international publicity and support for the Civil Rights Act. In 1946, the Supreme Court on the Morgan v. Virginia case declared the segregation of bus seating unconstitutional. The next year, in order to test the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation organized what was called the Journey of Reconciliation. The group selected for the Journey of Reconciliation consisted of white and black rode on a bus through the upper-south. The Journey of Reconciliation was not able to uncover the segregation in bus seating enough to have its prohibition enforced stronger, but it was able to gain more…show more content…
The thirteen Riders left from Washington D.C. in a Greyhound bus headed south towards Richmond, Virginia. Within the next four days, the Freedom Riders made it through Virginia and North Carolina, and into South Carolina without difficulty. Now about a week after the Rides had begun, the Freedom Riders encountered some of the first violence of the trip. On May 12, in South Carolina, three of the Riders were attacked as they attempted to enter a white-only waiting area in the bus station. The next day, when they arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, the Freedom Riders split into a second, Trailways bus, to continue the

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