Freedom Riders

The Freedom Riders, as they were known in the Civil Rights movement, were a group of black freedom advocates and some white college students who opposed the segregation of buses in the 50s and 60s.

Origins
During this time, segregation of buses was determined unconstitutional in two seperate court cases by the United States Supreme Court, but the federal government did not enforce the laws, as opposed to Southern states, which defied the rulings and continued to aggressively enforce Jim Crow Laws, including bus segregation. CORE, an organization dedicated to forwarding the cause of racial equality, organized numerous groups of people to ride segregated buses into the south, starting in 1961. This was in an effort to openly oppose the segregation laws in their most enforced location, and eventually, to call national media attention to their plight and to the Civil Rights movement as a whole.

The Rides
The Riders carefully planned their arrangement on the buses they rode: Interracial couples would sit up front, with at least one black member sitting in a white-only seat for oppositional purposes. Other members would be scattered throughout the bus, and one member would sit in accordance with the law in case of arrest, so that they would be able to contact the head CORE members and inform them of their arrest.

Seargeant Eugene "Bull" Connor, an avid opposer of the Rides, made plans with multiple southern Ku Klux Klan groups in order to stop the Freedom Riders. Along with multiple other states, he planned to attack the Freedom Riders in Birmingham, Alabama, with the police assisting The Ku Klux Klan for at least fifteen minutes without arrests. When the Riders arrived, they were viciously beaten with iron clubs, chains, and baseball bats to the point where blood nearly obscured their faces.

The incident called mass media attention to the Riders, and the nation was outraged at what they saw.

Kennedy Responds
After the violence of the Birmingham rides, the Kennedy administration urged the Freedom Riders and CORE to initiate a "cooling-off" period. The fury stirred in the South by the Rides, and the national attention called to the events, worried the Kennedys, who feared that polarization would lead to a stall in the progress of the Civil Rights movement. The Riders and the SNCC retorted that they had been stalled for decades by taking no action, and that aggressive protest, and its subsequent violent retaliation, was the only way to motivate the government to assist the Civil Rights movement.