Fortieth Anniversary Of Freedom Rides Celebrated With Special Bus Trip

Jet, May 28, 2001

The plan was simple: a group of 13 volunteers, mostly Black and White college students, would ride buses for a two-week trek through the South to test whether a recent Supreme Court ruling that ended the segregation of interstate travel, including on buses and trains and in station restaurants, restrooms and waiting areas, had been put into practice.

The impact, however, was profound.

Four decades afar that first group of Freedom Riders boarded buses in Washington, D.C., in May 1961 with only courage and faith to shield them from the vicious mobs of segregationists they met in Anniston, Birmingham and Montgomery, AL, about 150 people, including several original Freedom Riders, recently left; Atlanta for a three-day tour to retrace the most violent stops of the route in Alabama and to remember the miles that changed their lives and lives of everyone in the nation.

During a stop in Birmingham on the commemorative trip, U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), one of the leaders of the original group of Freedom Riders in 1961, described for a crowd of about 200 people what happened when his bus arrived in Montgomery 40 years ago.

"We started off the bus and stepped down the steps. It was so quiet, it was eerie. Then the mob came out of nowhere. First they turned on the press, then on us, and we were beaten," Lewis said. During that Montgomery stop, one Freedom Rider, James Zwerg, a White college student from Wisconsin, was kicked so brutally in the face and back that all his teeth were fractured, his nose was smashed and three of his vertebrae were cracked.

Brutal assaults and arrests were a routine part of the journey from D.C. to New Orleans as Black riders tried to use White waiting rooms and bathrooms at segregated bus stations and Whites tried to use facilities set aside for Blacks. Rep. Lewis, in fact, was the first Freedom Rider to be attacked during the trip. He was punched in the mouth as he quoted the Supreme Court ruling banning interstate segregation during a stop in Rock Hill, SC.

In another incident, a bus was firebombed near Anniston, AL, and an angry mob held the doors shut from the outside so the Freedom Riders could be burned alive. Although the riders narrowly escaped, they were attacked by the waiting mob.

But even the violence and the threat of death didn't deter them. As the riders were beaten and arrested along the way, hundreds more joined the campaign, which had been spearheaded by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In all there were dozens of Freedom Rides through the South in 1961 and more than 1,000 people took part in what became a watershed event in the Civil Rights Movement.

On September 22, 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission moved to end all traces of segregation in interstate travel, and the order went into effect Nov. 1, 1961, successfully ending the Freedom Rides.

"I don't want the young people to forget this history," Lewis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I feel blessed that I had an opportunity to play a small role in this journey toward ending racial discrimination in the South."