Federal marshals were later replaced by the Alabama National Guard, who escorted people out of the church at dawn. As the violence and federal intervention propelled the freedom riders to national prominence, King became one of the major spokesmen for the rides. Some activists, however, began to criticize King for his willingness to offer only moral and financial support but not his physical presence on the rides.
On 29 May , the Kennedy administration announced that it had directed the ICC to ban segregation in all facilities under its jurisdiction, but the rides continued. Students from all over the country purchased bus tickets to the South and crowded into jails in Jackson, Mississippi. With the participation of northern students came even more press coverage. On 1 November , the ICC ruling that segregation on interstate buses and facilities was illegal took effect.
He, and all others involved in the campaign, saw how provoking white southern violence through nonviolent confrontations could attract national attention and force federal action.
Williams to King, 31 May , in Papers — Document Research Requests. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. Skip to content Skip to navigation. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.
Search form Search. Back to the King Encyclopedia. Freedom Rides. May 4, to December 16, Share this article on Facebook Share this article on Twitter. Footnotes Arsenault, Freedom Riders , He was Ruth's bus-driving memorabilia is currently on display at the Tennessee State Museum.
The bus rides sparked bombings and beatings by white mobs, as well as imprisonment for many of the Black and white riders. However, the movement also brought about the eventual end of segregated transportation in the South.
More than 4 00 people, ranging in age from 14 to 61, participated in the Freedom Rides,. When some of the passengers decided to travel to Jackson, Mississippi, every Trailways driver turned down the job except Ruth, who was white and 23 at the time, wrote Bobby Ruth, his brother, and Blondell Strong Kimbrough, his friend, in a news release. Vivian's] head and him shrieking; I don't think he ever said 'sir. John Lewis, then 21 and already a veteran of sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, was the first Freedom Rider to be assaulted.
While trying to enter a whites-only waiting room in Rock Hill, South Carolina, two men set upon him, battering his face and kicking him in the ribs. Less than two weeks later, he joined a ride bound for Jackson.
As riders poured into the South, National Guardsmen were assigned to some buses to prevent violence. When activists arrived at the Jackson bus depot, police arrested blacks who refused to heed orders to stay out of white restrooms or vacate the white waiting room. And whites were arrested if they used "colored" facilities.
Officials charged the riders with breach of peace, rather than breaking segregation laws. Freedom Riders responded with a strategy they called "jail, no bail"—a deliberate effort to clog the penal facilities. Most of the riders in Jackson would endure six weeks in sweltering jail or prison cells rife with mice, insects, soiled mattresses and open toilets.
And that was the whole point. Jean Thompson, then a year-old CORE worker, said she was one of the riders slapped by a penal official for failing to call him "sir. It was eye-opening. To keep up their spirits, the prisoners sang freedom songs. None of the riders Etheridge spoke with expressed regrets, even though some would be entangled for years in legal appeals that went all the way to the Supreme Court which issued a ruling in that led to a reversal of the breach of peace convictions.
More than two dozen of the riders Etheridge interviewed went on to become teachers or professors, and there are eight ministers as well as lawyers, Peace Corps workers, journalists and politicians. Like Lewis, Bob Filner, of California, is a congressman. And few former Freedom Riders still practice civil disobedience.
Theresa Walker, 80, was arrested in New York City in during a protest over the police killing there the year before of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from Guinea.
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