We Shall Not Be Moved: Remembering the 1961 Freedom Rides
"We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal. We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back."
John Lewis
In 1961, civil rights activists set out to test a 1960 Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals, was unconstitutional. The Freedom Riders planned to integrate bus terminal waiting rooms, restaurants, and other services at bus stops throughout the South, where local Jim Crow laws preserved racial segregation in defiance of federal law.
Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), two groups of riders left Washington, DC on May 4, 1961. Among the original group of freedom riders was John Lewis (1940-2020). Lewis, the legendary civil rights activist and a member of the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020, was beaten up and imprisoned for 40 days while participating in the Freedom Rides.
John R. Lewis, National Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Committee, poses at the National Urban League headquarters in New York City on Aug. 23, 1963. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams)
Members of an interracial group pose on May 4, 1961 in Washington with a map of a route they plan to take to test segregation in bus terminal restaurants and rest rooms in the South. From left are: Edward Blankenheim, Tucson, Ariz., James Farmer, New York City; Miss Genevieve Hughes, Chevy Chase, Md.; the Rev. B. Elton Cox, High Point, N.C., and Henry Thomas, St. Augustine, Fla. They are all members of the Congress of Racial Equality, the organization sponsoring the trip. (AP Photo/BHR)
A Freedom Rides map created by AP to illustrate a news story on the Freedom Rides, 1961. (AP Photo)
The two buses (one a Greyhound bus and one a Trailways bus) that set out from Washington, DC arrived in Alabama on May 14, 1961, where they were met by members of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist mobs. When the Greyhound bus arrived in Anniston on that afternoon they found the terminal locked. A mob organized by the Ku Klux Klan attacked the bus, smashing windows, slashing tires and denting the outside of the bus. The bus left Anniston but was soon abandoned by its police escort just six miles out of town on Route 202, where it was again surrounded by an angry white mob. A member of the crowd tossed a firebomb through a broken window, others tried to block the doors, forcing the Freedom Riders to escape through a window. The Freedom Riders were finally rescued by a convoy from the Black community in Birmingham organized by Civil Rights Leader, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.
When Governor John Patterson announced that he was unable to guarantee the safety of the Freedom Riders in Alabama, seventeen of the group were forced to fly to New Orleans, after enduring hours of delays because of bomb threats at the Birmingham airport.
A Freedom Rider bus went up in flames when a fire bomb was tossed through a broken window near Anniston, Ala., May 14, 1961. The bus, which was testing bus station segregation in the south, had stopped due to flat tires inflicted by a white mob at the Anniston bus station. Passengers escaped without serious injury, but endured beatings by a white mob that followed the bus as it left Anniston. (AP Photo)
Page from a chronology of the Freedom Rides compiled by AP’s Birmingham Bureau, 1961. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and brother of President John F. Kennedy, is deep in thought at the Justice Department as he worked with aides considering legal measures to be taken following racial violence in Montgomery, Ala., May 21, 1961, Washington, D.C. He ordered a task force of U.S. Marshals and Byron R. White, Deputy U.S. Attorney General, to the area to safeguard federal rights. (AP Photo/Byron Rollins)
The Rev. Fred .L. Shuttlesworth (pointing), a Birmingham integration leader, talks with students in the white waiting room in the Birmingham, Ala., bus station on Wednesday, May 18, 1961. From left to right, the Freedom Riders are Charles Butler, Catherine Burke, Lucretia Collins, and Mary McCollum. Police later jailed them. (AP Photo)
AP news report, June 1, 1961, on the coviction of the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth on two breach of peace charges related to the Freedom Rides. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
George Lincoln Rockwell, center, self-styled leader of the American Nazi Party, and his "hate bus" bearing several young men wearing swastika arm bands, stops for gas in Montgomery, Ala., May 23, 1961, en route to Mobile, Alabama. (AP Photo)
Rockwell, the party’s head, said the “hate bus” is en route from Arlington, Va., to New Orleans as a protest against Communism and racial integration. The occupants of the bus said they had planned to make a speech in Montgomery but that Alabama Attorney General MacDonald Gallion asked them not to. (AP News Report, May 23, 1961)
Three members of a racially mixed group of college student Freedom Riders catch a nap on May 20, 1961 in the Birmingham bus station after they were thwarted several times in attempts to board busses to Montgomery. Left to right are Susan Hermann, Etta Simpson and Frederick Leonard. All attend college in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Horace Cort)
After the violence in Anniston and Birmingham, CORE leaders, concerned for the safety of the Freedom Riders, were ready to cut short the protest itinerary. Nashville activist and civil rights leader Diane Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was determined to continue the struggle. Over the next months, Nash organized students to continue the Freedom Rides and became a spokesperson for the movement, meeting with the press and government officials.
When Freedom Riders, including John Lewis and Jim Zwerg, were beaten in Montgomery, Ala., on May 20th, Nash was not deterred; “…it would be a mistake to believe an incident of violence would end our efforts. Violence usually serves to strengthen us.”
In this 1960 file photo, The Rev. Kelly Miller Smith, looks at a paper with Fisk University student Diane Nash in Nashville, Tenn. (Gerald Holly/The Tennessean via AP)
Jim Zwerg, a Freedom Rider recuperates in hospital on May 21, 1961 in Montgomery, Ala. after he was beaten by a mob at the bus station yesterday. Zwerg, 21 years old ministerial student, suffered cuts and bruises and lost several teeth in the attack. (AP Photo/Horace Cort)
Civil rights leaders hold a news conference in Montgomery, Ala. and announce that the Freedom Rides will continue, May 23, 1961. In the foreground is John Lewis, one of the riders who was beaten. Others, left to right: James Farmer, Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Rev. Martin Luther King. Lewis wears bandage on head. (AP Photo)
Troops of National Guardsmen stand on duty at the Trailways bus station on May 24, 1961 in Montgomery, Ala. as Freedom Riders plan to resume their bus trips through the south. (AP Photo/Horace Cort)
A new bus load of Freedom Riders, including four white college professors and three Black students, arrives in Montgomery, AL, May 24, 1961, under guard of police and National Guard. Center, with glasses, is Rev. William S. Coffin, Jr. At left, partly hidden, is Dr. David E. Swift, and behind him, wearing glasses, is Dr. John D. Maguire. (AP Photo/Perry Aycock)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader, shakes hands with Paul Dietrich just before a bus of Freedom Riders left Montgomery, Alabama, May 24, 1961. Dietrich, ministerial student from Virginia, joined the Freedom Riders. (AP Photo)
Black Freedom Riders have breakfast at a lunch counter in the bus station in Montgomery, Ala., on May 24, 1961. It is the first time the eating facilities at the station are integrated. They group will travel to Jackson, Miss., and New Orleans, La., on their Freedom Ride movement to test the effectiveness of the 1960 Supreme Court ruling on integration. (AP Photo)
Freedom Riders from California are held at Harris County jail after refusing to post $500 bonds on unlawful assembly charges in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 11, 1961. The group of 7 whites and 9 blacks was arrested at the coffee shop of Houston's Union Station train depot when they tried to get service. They were charged by the manager of the coffee shop. (AP Photo)
A group of the "Freedom Riders" sit in a truck as they wait to leave for the Hinds County Farm in Jackson, Miss., May 29, 1961. Twenty-two of the "riders" who were left in the county jail were transferred. (AP Photo/Ferd Kaufman)
“Freedom Riders” Levert Taylor, 20, and Glenda Jackson, both of Shreveport, La., are shown with policeman W.L. Copeland at Jackson, Miss., on Nov. 1, 1961 in Jackson, Miss., after their arrest on a breach of peace charge for refusing to move out of the white waiting room at a bus station there. Taylor and Miss Jackson were in Jackson to test the ICC desegregation ruling. (AP Photo/Jim Bourdier)
Over 200 Blacks are shown as they were arrested in Albany, Ga. after staging a demonstration in front of City Hall protesting against the trial of Freedom Riders arrested here earlier, Dec. 13, 1961. Nearly 500 have been arrested this week. (AP Photo/Horace Cort)
Lucretia Collins, 21, "Freedom Rider" from Fairbanks, Alaska, walks to plane in Jackson, May 27, 1961, after being freed from the county jail on $500 bond. (AP Photo)
Over 400 Freedom Riders participated in the movement, and over 300 were arrested and jailed, mainly in Mississippi, burdening the jail and court systems there for months. The courage and resilience of the Freedom Riders inspired a generation of students and activists who witnessed the power of nonviolent protest. Tactics used by the Freedom Riders were adopted in the ongoing struggle for voting rights, integration and racial equality.
On September 22, 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) outlawed discriminatory seating practices on interstate buses and ordered that “Whites Only” signs be removed by November 1. Birmingham, Alabama did not comply until January 1962.
Three years after the first Freedom Ride, the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, outlawing segregation in public facilities in all parts of the United States.