Virginia that segregation in the facilities provided for interstate travelers, such as bus terminals, restaurants, and restrooms, was also unconstitutional. Virginia (1946), that made segregation in interstate transportation illegal, in 1960 the U.S. Fourteen years later, in a new national context of sit-ins, boycotts, and the emergence of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Freedom Rides were able to harness enough national attention to force federal enforcement and policy changes.įollowing an earlier ruling, Morgan v. The lack of confrontation, however, resulted in little media attention and failed to realize CORE’s goals for the rides. Called the Journey of Reconciliation, the ride challenged bus segregation in the upper parts of the South, avoiding the more dangerous Deep South. The Freedom Rides were first conceived in 1947 when CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation organized an interracial bus ride across state lines to test a Supreme Court decision that declared segregation on interstate buses unconstitutional. Although the campaign succeeded in securing an Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ban on segregation in all facilities under their jurisdiction, the Freedom Rides fueled existing tensions between student activists and Martin Luther King, Jr., who publicly supported the riders, but did not participate in the campaign. Traveling on buses from Washington, D.C., to Jackson, Mississippi, the riders met violent opposition in the Deep South, garnering extensive media attention and eventually forcing federal intervention from John F.

Chapter 15: Atlanta Arrest and Presidential Politicsĭuring the spring of 1961, student activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides to challenge segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals.Chapter 8: The Violence of Desperate Men.Chapter 6: Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.

Major King Events Chronology: 1929-1968.

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