Freedom Riders
By: Ashlyn
Facts
- The Original group involved 13 African-Americans and White civil rights activists.
- The African-Americans in this group tried to use the "Whites Only" restrooms and lunch counters.
- The group encountered tremendous violence from white protestors.
- The Freedom Riders drew international attention.
- After awhile hundreds of new Freedom riders engaged in similar actions.
About the Freedom Riders
The Freedom Riders was a group of African-Americans and White people who traveled around the south to protest segregation in interstate bus terminals. The obstacles these men and women went through was unbearable, they would get beat almost to death by mobs and were sometimes left to die. The mobs ruined their buses but the Freedom Riders pushed forward, their goal was to reach New Orleans, Louisiana on May 17, to pay tribute to the 7th Anniversary of the supreme courts Brown V. Board of Education, which ruled that segregation of the nation's public schools was unconstitutional.
Connections with the Freedom Riders
- Martin Luther King Jr. Led a service at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, this was attended by more that one thousand supporters of the Freedom Riders Group.
- An African-American Seminary student and influential member of the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a few other people was viciously attacked as they attempted to enter a "Whites Only" waiting area.