FREEDOM RIDERS

“Analysis of the Freedom Riders”



“Analysis of the Freedom Riders”

The Freedom Ride is the name of a form of resistance that emerged from the U.S. civil rights movement. The so-called Freedom Riders took part in the abolition of state-sanctioned racial segregation by driving in inter- city buses in the southern United States to implement the Supreme Court decision on the prohibition of racial segregation in public transportation, restaurants and waiting rooms. On May 1940, Jack Delano, the first Freedom Rider left Washington DC on 4 May 1961 and reached New Orleans on 17 May. The aim of the trip was to have a joint trip by whites and blacks, to project equality, and to test the local laws. The trip and the violent protests that followed, gave impetus to the civil rights movement and at first came to the attention of the American people, followed by the attention of the world's public (Moye, 2007).

Freedom Riders are the definitive history of the 1961 freedom ride campaigns and one of the best books written about the civil rights struggle, which should be read my anyone who is interested in knowing about the subject in ample detail. In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (core), having recovered from the organizational challenges of the 1950s, was eager to claim a central place in the burgeoning struggle in the South. The core leaders revived a strategy they had employed tentatively in 1947 to test the compliance with laws that banned segregated interstate bus travel. With the foreknowledge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the civil rights scholars have increasingly shifted their attention away from the movement's prime and major campaigns of the early 1960s to the less known campaigns, leaders, organizations, and communities. Raymond Arsenault's finely crafted a narrative history that demonstrates that there is still much to be gained by revisiting the movement's epic battles.

The freedom riders-with deepened commitments to radical action and sacrifice, shaped the ongoing struggle. This was clear especially through community organizing and voter registration campaigns in Mississippi and Georgia. The initial impact of the freedom rides on segregation was mixed and contingent with segregated traveling group crumbling quickly in the Upper South while militant type resistance became apparent in the Deep South hardened. Mississippi's response to the freedom rides undermined the more dramatic confrontation between direct action and southern segregation-as would occur in Birmingham and Selma (Taylor, 1989).

Ultimately, the ...