Celebrating The 50th Anniversary Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1964

The saga of the Freedom Riders is an empowering story of courage and commitment. Their courage and sacrifice changed America forever!

Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia(1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960),[1] which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.[2] The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961,[3] and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.[4]

Boynton outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955) that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel. The ICC failed to enforce its ruling, and Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.

Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses, but they often first let white mobs attack them without intervention.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored most of the subsequent Freedom Rides, but some were also organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Freedom Rides followed dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters, conducted by students and youth throughout the South, and boycotts of retail establishments that maintained segregated facilities, beginning in 1960.

The Freedom Riders established great credibility with blacks and whites throughout the United States and inspired many persons to engage in direct action for civil rights. Perhaps most significantly, the actions of the Freedom Riders from the North, who faced danger on behalf of southern blacks, impressed and inspired the many blacks living in rural areas throughout the South. They formed the backbone of the wider civil rights movement, who engaged in voter registration and other activities. Southern blacks generally organized around their churches, the center of their communities and a base of moral strength.

The Freedom Riders helped inspire participation in other subsequent civil rights campaigns, including voter registration throughout the South, freedom schools, and the black power movement. At the time, most blacks in southern states had been unable to register to vote, due to constitutions, laws and practices that had effectively disfranchised most of them since the turn of the twentieth century.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, Oprah Winfrey invited all living Freedom Riders to join her TV program to celebrate their legacy.