12/10/2023 0 Comments Freedom riders![]() ![]() One of the two buses had its tires slashed and windows smashed before it was firebombed. They were kicked and beaten unconscious, assaulted with bats and batons, and arrested under laws that had already been declared illegal by the Supreme Court - but which festered nevertheless. As their buses arrived in each segregated town, the Riders were brutally attacked by vicious, hateful mobs of white supremacists. But for far too many Americans, that promise of equality was slow to arrive. Frances and Walter Bergman, Albert Bigelow, Ed Blankenheim, Reverend Benjamin Elton Cox, James Farmer, Genevieve Hughes, Jimmy McDonald, James Peck, Joe Perkins, Charles Person, Hank Thomas, and a 21-year-old student at the American Baptist Theological Seminary named John Lewis.īy the time of the first Freedom Rides, Thurgood Marshall and other heroes of the early Civil Rights Movement had already persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the devastating doctrine of ‘separate but equal,’ which had given legal cover to the horrors of Jim Crow for more than half a century. They were teachers and students, carpenters and architects, ministers and servicemembers. They came from 9 different States and the District of Columbia they were Black and white, men and women, ranging in age from 18 to 61, sitting side by side in a simple affirmation of shared humanity. On May 4, 1961, thirteen Americans set out on Greyhound and Trailways buses from Washington, D.C., to peacefully protest the scourge of segregation. ![]()
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