CORE national director James Farmer knew that only something drastic would make the federal government overcome its fear of political backlash and enforce its equal rights laws. He wanted to “make it more dangerous politically for the federal government not to enforce federal law than it would be for them to enforce federal law.” Against the backdrop of the sit-ins and the new energy of SNCC, Farmer saw an opportunity in the ICC rulings and the Boynton decision. He spoke with CORE executive secretary Marvin Rich about a revival of the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. Farmer and Rich thought the risk of prison time for the participants would raise the stakes even beyond those of the sit-ins.
They named their concept “Freedom Rides” (there would be no “reconciliation” this time). The conceived rides would test the commitment of the Kennedy administration to desegregated transportation facilities by means of an interracial group that would travel through the deep South.
In line with Gandhian principles, Farmer wrote letters describing the Freedom Rides plan to President John F. Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the presidents of the Trailways and Greyhound bus companies, and the chairman of the ICC. Farmer received no responses. The only media attention came from two African American journalists.
CORE sought participants for the rides by advertising in the SNCC newsletter, The Student Voice. Farmer and other CORE staffers read the applicants’ essays, recommendations, and, in some cases, parental consent forms, and selected fourteen candidates (three of whom were unable to make it for the scheduled departure).
Retired professor Walter Bergman and his wife Frances were the oldest participants at ages 61 and 57. New England pacifist Albert Bigelow had served as a U.S. Navy captain during World War II, but in 1958 he had protested the use of nuclear weapons by steering a boat into a South Pacific testing zone. Other older members included James Farmer and James Peck (the only veteran of the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation).
Also chosen were CORE field secretaries Joseph Perkins, Genevieve Hughes, and Isaac Reynolds, staffer Ed Blankenheim, former NAACP youth secretary Elton Cox, New York folksinger Jimmy McDonald, and students Robert Griffin, Herman Harris, Ivor “Jerry” Moore, Mae Frances Moultrie, Charles Person, Hank Thomas, and John Lewis.
An Alabamian and a veteran of the Nashville sit-ins, Lewis had been thrilled to read about the Freedom Rides. He had previously written to activist Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth about testing segregated waiting areas at the Birmingham Greyhound station. The fiery Shuttlesworth often defied authority and had tried to enroll his daughter in a white grammar school, but even he didn’t think the time was right for that particular action.
In late April 1961, the about-to-be freedom riders gathered in Washington, D.C., at a Quaker-run Fellowship House, where they studied Gandhi’s and Thoreau’s writings about civil disobedience. James Lawson of Nashville trained them for three days, bringing in social activists to role play with the volunteers. They also met with sociologists and lawyers who described economics, ideologies, and legal rationales in the Deep South.
It was a sober exercise. The eighteen riders knew they might die. Some wrote to loved ones and drew up wills.
On May 4, 1961, six whites and twelve blacks boarded a bus. With the help of organizers Diane Nash and Gordon Carey, they planned to travel through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Their goal was to arrive in New Orleans on May 17, the seventh anniversary of the 1954 Brown v. Board decision.
Through the Upper South
Farmer’s letters must have had some effect, for colored and whites-only signs were temporarily taken down in many of the Virginia stops. The riders passed through Fredericksburg, Richmond, Petersburg, Farmville, Lynchburg, and Danville without incident. The first trouble came in Charlotte, North Carolina, when Joe Perkins went into a Greyhound station barbershop and asked for a shoe-shine, which was denied. He was arrested when he refused to leave, but his case was thrown out in court the next day.
The other riders continued on, and, as expected, the further South they went, the more opposition they met. In Rock Hill, South Carolina, a group of young white men were playing pinball machines and loitering around the station. Two stopped John Lewis from entering a white waiting room. As he had been taught, Lewis cited the Boynton v. Virginia decision. They responded by punching him in the face and kicking him.
Genevieve Freeman and Lewis’s seatmate Albert Bigelow stepped in to shield Lewis and were attacked as well. A watching police officer finally intervened when the white youths knocked Genevieve Freeman to the ground. When asked by police if he wanted to press charges against his attackers, Lewis said no. The Freedom Riders viewed their white attackers as symptoms of a problem, not the disease itself.
The attack in Rock Hill was overshadowed in the media that day by Alan Shepherd’s launch into space on NASA’s first manned rocket. The riders quietly made their way to Rock Hill’s Friendship Junior College, home to sit-in veterans who greeted and hosted them.
Then the ride continued. Though the group successfully rode through the rest of South Carolina and into Georgia, several riders left along the way. Elton Cox had to prepare a sermon for Mother’s Day, John Lewis departed to be interviewed for a job, and James Farmer left after hearing the devastating news of his father’s death.
The riders reached the 700-mile mark in Georgia and dined with Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta on Saturday, May 13.
They then decided to split into two groups to test both the Greyhound and Trailways lines. King had his doubts. He privately told a reporter who was covering the event, “You will never make it through Alabama.”