Freedom Riders Research Paper

Words: 559
Pages: 3

Could you imagine yourself being beaten up, incarcerated or even killed, for attempting to enjoy the same rights and privileges others did? I guess not. This is why the Freedom Riders began. Tired of the abuse, they decided to act against the discrepancies the skin-colored race suffered from on a daily basis. Back in the decade of the 1950s and 60s, black children had to attend separate schools and buses had designated separate seating areas for black and white passengers. Neither could black people walk on the same side of the street, eat at the same restaurant or use the same bathrooms; in fact bathrooms were separated for men, women and colored. The Freedom Riders were constitutional rights objectors who traveled in interstate buses into …show more content…
The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961, with a programmed arriving time to New Orleans on May 17. Occupying two public buses, seven colored-skin people and six whites journeyed into the Deep South. The director of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), James Farmer, led this first ride. The riders traveled without incident across Virginia and North Carolina. They encountered violence for the first time in South Carolina when several white men knocked black members of the crew who tried to use a “whites only” bathroom. Nevertheless, the Riders continued their journey, but a few miles later, the ride for one of the buses ended when a group of whites firebombed the vehicle. Subsequently, they crossed Georgia without incidents. When the activists reached Alabama on May 14, the attacks intensified. That same day a second group departed from Nashville to strengthen the harassed Riders in Alabama, headed by Diane Nash, a participant of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Despite their efforts and the support, the Freedom Riders did not make it to New