WASHINGTON (AP) – Thirteen bus riders—six white, seven Negro—left Thursday on a 13-day journey to challenge racial segregation in the Deep South. They promise they’ll go to jail if necessary.

The group plans to protest separate restaurant, washroom and other facilities for whites and Negroes at bus terminals and rest-stops.

“We shall not be moved,” they softly sang to the tune of an old Negro spiritual as they boarded two regularly scheduled buses.

The trip is sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

The riders plan to wind up May 17 at New Orleans after stops at Richmond; Petersburg and Lynchburg, Va.; Greensboro and Charlotte N.C.; Rock Hill and Sumter, S.C.; Augusta and Atlanta, Ga.; Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala.; and Jackson, Miss.

The 13 plan to join a May 17 rally in New Orleans marking the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court decision banning segregation in public schools.

Montgomery Advertiser, May 3, 1961