Freedom Riders - #BlackHistoryFact

Freedom Riders wait to board a bus in Montgomery, AL in 1961

"On May 4, 1961, a group of 13 African-American and white civil rights activists launched the Freedom Rides, a series of bus trips through the American South to protest segregation in interstate bus terminals. The Freedom Riders, who were recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a U.S. civil rights group, departed from Washington, D.C., and attempted to integrate facilities at bus terminals along the way into the Deep South. African-American Freedom Riders tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters, and vice versa. The group encountered tremendous violence from white protestors along the route, but also drew international attention to their cause. Over the next few months, several hundred Freedom Riders engaged in similar actions. In September 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in bus and train stations nationwide."

Violent Response. The first Freedom Riders manage to escape their burning bus outside Anniston, Ala., a Ku Klux Klan stronghold, after a mob shot out its tires, smashed its windows, and threw an incendiary device into it on 14 May 1961.

"Freedom Rides" History.com, 2010. January 28, 2015. http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-rides