Freedom Riders

Jim Lawson speaks about JFK and the Cold War as a critical issue facing the U.S.

Bernard Lafayette speaks about nonviolence as a response.

Catherine Burke Brooks speaks about racist treatment in the South.

Bernard Lafayette speaks about traveling from Montgomery, Alabama into Mississippi.

Pauline Knight-Ofuso speaks about the black press.

Rioters turn violent against the Freedom Riders despite the presence of the media. The resulting photographs were "about as dramatic as anything I think anyone had ever seen coming out of the Civil Rights struggle," says Ray Arsenault. "The notion that just for the attempt to sit on the front of a bus, that you could risk your life, that people could try to burn you to death was incredible."

Diane Nash and Charles Person discuss the difficulties for black people traveling in the segregated South.

Before getting on the bus, Freedom Riders participated in CORE training sessions, which included a demonstration of nonviolence in volatile situations. Rev. James Lawson and Julian Bond discuss how nonviolence courted to violence in order to attract publicity for the cause.

In a news report from Herb Kaplow, the reporter recounts his experience when covering a Freedom Ride. "The mob came out and went straight to the reporters, and started beating them and kicking them and throwing their cameras down, smashing them on the ground." After the reporters were forced away, the mob turned on the Freedom Riders.

Glenda Gaither Davis is interviewed while riding on the bus toward Jackson, Mississippi.

The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" created a system of racial apartheid across the American South for more than 75 years. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants.

Ray Arsenault discusses the importance of Irene Morgan, who took her case to the Supreme Court with Morgan vs. Virginia. However, the subsequent Supreme Court ruling of the unconstitutionality of segregated interstate bus travel, Julian Bond points out, was largely ignored in the segregated South.