Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett relieved Robert Kennedy and annoyed John Patterson by vowing that his state would not see the violence that had happened in Alabama. Barnett told the attorney general to keep his federal marshals at bay. U.S. Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi told Kennedy that the riders would be safe—in Mississippi jails. Kennedy wasn’t pleased, but, grateful for the riders’ physical safety, he felt that the federal government could do nothing about the promised arrests.
On Wednesday, May 24, riders convened in Dr. Harris’s kitchen for a breakfast prayer meeting. They wondered if they would even make it out of Montgomery. At 6:15 a.m., Alabama National Guardsmen escorted them to the Trailways station where an antagonistic white crowd was kept in check by plainclothes detectives, FBI agents, and 500 National Guardsmen.
King wanted to support the riders and atone for not joining them. He, his brother A. D. King, and Abernathy walked into the Trailways station and ordered food at the white counter. Black waitresses from the Negro counter served them, thus officially desegregating the station’s food service. (Though the next day, Abernathy, Shuttlesworth, Wyatt Tee Walker, Bernard Lee, Yale University chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr., and another group of riders would be arrested when ordering food at the very same lunch counter.)
Twelve riders stepped aboard the Trailways bus, where they were joined by Floyd Mann, National Guard riflemen, and a dozen photographers. Lawson, who was chosen to be the spokesperson, shook hands with King through the window. National Guard General Graham stepped on the bus and announced that the journey would be “hazardous.” He said that he genuinely wished for their safety.
In spite of the escort convoys stretched behind and in front of them, most of the riders felt uncomfortable and scared. They had heard tales about Mississippi, “the Magnolia state,” stories of lynchings and bodies dumped in rivers. There were whispers of snipers, booby traps, and bombs. Riders hid wills, notes, and names of relatives in their clothes.
FBI surveillance, two helicopter spotters, and three U.S. Border Patrol airplanes accompanied the caravan. One thousand Guardsmen were stationed between Montgomery and Mississippi.
The bus passed by Selma’s angry crowds. The escorting officials stated that it was too dangerous to stop anywhere. Some riders understood the concern but felt that it contradicted the point of the Freedom Rides which was to “travel freely from place to place.” They drove by more fist-shaking crowds, and at one point three cars filled with teenagers wove in and out of the convoy.
Riders spent the trip speaking with reporters and singing. They set Harry Belafonte’s tune “The Banana Boat Song” (“Day-O”) to words about the Greyhound bus: “Freedom’s coming and it won’t be long.”
A mass of Mississippi Guardsmen and patrolmen met the caravan at the state border. Reports of dynamite held up the bus as Guardsmen searched the woods. After an hour, bus drivers traded places, Mississippi Guardsmen replaced Alabama Guardsmen, and Floyd Mann stepped off. Mississippi National Guard commander G. V. “Sonny” Montgomery (later a congressman) got on.
There was no bathroom on the bus. The Reverend C. T. Vivian, who hadn’t even consulted his wife before leaving from Nashville for Montgomery, protested having no rest stops along the 258-mile journey. Montgomery’s terse dismissal of the concern bothered the riders.
Meanwhile, back in Montgomery, some 2,000 whites mobbed the Greyhound station and threw bottles and rocks at John Lewis, Hank Thomas, and others as they boarded a second bus. James Farmer hadn’t planned to continue from Montgomery to Jackson. He helped others load luggage before waving goodbye from the platform. Seventeen-year-old CORE volunteer Doris Castle asked through the window, “Jim, you’re going with us, aren’t you?” He mumbled something about CORE paperwork and obligations. She stared and said, “Jim, please.” Farmer put his luggage on the bus and climbed aboard.
The second bus caught authorities off guard. Troops were still stationed on the road, but the second bus didn’t have the same kind of escort. The riders made it out of the station at 11:25 a.m. The ride was tense and uncertain. Journalists were scared away by rumors of ambushes. Only one reporter thought the chance of a good story was worth the risk.
Lucretia Collins, elected leader of the Greyhound group, helped keep everyone on the bus calm by conducting nonviolent workshops and singing. Hank Thomas added a verse to the song, “Hallelujah, I’m a traveling, hallelujah, ain’t it fine? Hallelujah... I’m a traveling down freedom’s main line.” He sang, “I’m taking a ride on the Greyhound bus line, I’m riding the front seat to Jackson this time.” They were also comforted by thoughts of the other riders on their way to Jackson.
Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett had told Jackson residents to stay at home. Officials would handle the riders’ arrival according to state law and protect riders from mob violence. They would simply arrest them.
Jackson and Mississippi Jails
When the first bus arrived in Jackson, a crowd of journalists and plainclothesmen parted to let the riders walk to the white waiting room. A policeman stopped them there and told them to move along. C. T. Vivian had gone unnoticed into the men’s room and was only arrested because he told the police captain that he was with the others.
In the patrol wagon, riders sang “We Shall Overcome,” but the journey and arrests had taken a psychological toll. Rider Dave Dennis said that they were all so prepared for death in Mississippi, several freedom riders suffered breakdowns when they weren’t met with violence. Some screamed, pulled their hair, and banged their heads against the wall.
When the second bus arrived, the riders were similarly arrested. Farmer mentioned the Boynton Supreme Court decision and was immediately arrested. Lewis was arrested while he was at a white urinal.
As the Mississippi jails filled with freedom riders, Robert Kennedy met with SNCC and CORE leaders, including Diane Nash and Charles Sherrod, and advised them to shift their attention to registering voters.
The media was less interested in the Mississippi arrests than it had been in the more sensational violence in Alabama. Attention dwindled, and about two-thirds of the public condemned the riders’ goals. Even many who agreed with their ideas disapproved of their methods. In June, U.S. News & World Report would state, “The leaders preach ‘nonviolence.’ . . . Violence, however, has been the result.”
The riders went to court two days after their arrests. The judge fined each rider who had been arrested $200 and sentenced them to sixty days in jail for “disturbing the peace,” a charge harder to challenge in court than that of violating local segregation laws. The riders refused bail and planned to stay in prison for forty days, which was long enough to cost the state money but to still be able to file an appeal. This was a daunting commitment, especially for the newest riders who had gone through the shortest training session.
In jail, the riders persisted in singing their freedom songs. The violent criminals upstairs heard their voices and traded candy and knickknacks with them. Three days after their arrests, twenty-seven riders were moved to Hinds County Jail, which had fewer amenities and no soap or towels, before being transferred to the Hinds County Prison Farm.
The farm’s cells were small. Because of a shortage of beds, some prisoners slept on benches, tables, and floors. They weren’t taken out to work with the regular inmates but instead swept and mopped their rooms. Jailers took away smokers’ cigarettes and cut out afternoon snacks. Riders were served burnt black coffee in tin cups. After a hunger strike, they began to eat the jail food which consisted of tough meat, biscuits, and syrup.
Superintendent Max Thomas beat C. T. Vivian, Hank Thomas, and Jean Thompson in the head for failing to call him “sir.” Jim Bevel kept spirits up with sermons and songs. Still, tensions broke out between the religious and nonreligious and with those less committed to nonviolence. LeRoy Wright argued and fought with everyone to the point that organizers had him bailed him out early.
At midnight on June 15, the riders were thrown into windowless trailer trucks. Two hours later, they emerged to discover that they had been moved one hundred miles northwest to Parchman Prison Farm, perhaps the worst of Mississippi’s notorious state penitentiaries.
Parchman was essentially a slave plantation. Hundreds of black convicts guided mule-drawn plows across the 21,000 acres, farming a daily quota of cotton and other crops. Guards kicked, bullwhipped, and cursed at the prisoners.
Superintendent Fred Jones greeted the riders and warned that here there were “bad niggers,” some of whom were on death row, who would “beat you up and cut you as soon as look at you.” Shotgun-toting guards pushed the riders past barbed wire fences and challenged them to sing songs. When two resisted, the guards laughed and said there weren’t any newspapermen out here.
Inside the cement block buildings, deputies stripped the riders naked. Two and a half hours later, a sheriff led them, two by two, into the shower room and ordered them to shave their facial hair. After their shower, they were divided by race and taken to maximum security wings, supposedly to protect them from criminals who wished them ill.
Again they waited naked. An hour and a half later, guards brought them olive green shorts and a t-shirt emblazoned with the words Mississippi State Penitentiary. They deliberately handed out shorts that were either too baggy or too tight.
James Farmer insisted on meeting with the director of prisons. A nearly nude Farmer demanded that they be allowed to work. The director responded that Governor Ross Barnett didn’t want them to work.
Barnett was worried about negative press attention, and the riders would be at the mercy of hardened criminals. After voicing this apparent concern, the director admitted that he wanted the riders to stay inside and rot.
Two weeks into the their stay, Governor Barnett gave a tour of the prison and pointed to the riders as an example of what outside instigators faced. The Jackson Daily News posted a facetious bulletin stating that tourists promoting race-mixing could stay at Parchman.
The riders’ rooms consisted of a metal-frame bed, an inmate-made mattress, one commode, a small washbowl, and no blankets. The only interaction they had with one another was when they showered. The only reading materials allowed were palm-sized Salvation Army copies of the New Testament. There was no incoming mail, but riders could send a letter once a week. Lewis wrote to let the American Baptist Theological Seminary know why he was to miss graduation.
During hunger strikes, guards tempted them with pecan pie and fried chicken. When fasting ended, riders were served nearly inedible food. The director had also admitted to Farmer that while they were legally required to feed the prisoners, the prisons could put enough salt in the riders’ food to make their stomachs turn. Farmer said he lost thirty pounds.
The riders’ singing prompted one guard to ask how he could stop their singing if he couldn’t “go upside their heads.” Instead of beating them, the guards took the riders’ mattresses. Hank Thomas declared, “Take my mattress! I’ll keep my soul,” prompting others to throw their mattresses against the bars. Howard University’s Fred Leonard held fast to his mattress as the guards pulled it into the hall. The riders cheered him on as he sang, “I’m Gonna Tell God How You Treat Me.”
The guards’ tortures continued. They blew cigarette smoke into smokers’ cells. Overseers kept the lights on all night and closed the windows when it was hot. They drenched riders with hoses, flooded the cells, and opened the windows. At night, they turned on the fan as riders slept on the wet metal floor.
“Troublemakers” were shocked with cattle prods and placed in sun-baked sweat boxes. Those put in solitary confinement were often bound with wrist-breakers, devices tightened around the wrists. One woman miscarried as a prison guard just watched.
On July 7, the first round of riders were handed their clothes and released to lawyers and friends. They hugged one another, but none cried.
While the SNCC riders were stuck in prison, reinforcements flooded into Jackson. Hundreds of clergymen, communists, rabbis, Quakers, conscientious objectors, pacifists, unionists, and professors made Freedom Rides that summer. Diane Nash had her work cut out for her.
CORE posted a $500 appeal bond for every freedom rider, paying $300,000 in total. The prosecutor almost succeeded in bankrupting them. Farmer told Thurgood Marshall who mentioned that he had set up a NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. The fund could help CORE out with between $200,000 and $250,000. Farmer threw his arms around him.
When the riders left Mississippi, the prosecutor ordered that each case be tried in state appeals courts. If the riders didn’t return, they had to forfeit their money. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP sent $1,000 to help CORE pay for chartered buses to take riders back to Mississippi. This time, CORE made it clear that the riders had to stay out of jail.