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Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Founded in 1942 by an interracial group of students in Chicago, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), pioneered the use of nonviolent direct action in America's civil rights struggle. Early CORE activists James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, Homer Jack, and George Houser had all been identified as an international peace and justice organization. Influenced by Gandhi, in the 1940s, CORE used sit-ins and other non-violent direct actions to integrate restaurants and businesses. -
Start of the Freedom Rides - 1961
The 1961 Freedom Rides, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), were modeled after the organization's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. The 1961 Freedom Rides sought to test a 1960 decision by the supreme court in Boynton v. Virginia that the segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals, was unconstitutional as well. -
First Freedom Ride - May 4 - 17, 1961
Led by CORE James Farmer, 13 young riders, 7 Blacks and 6 Whites. Their names were John Lewis, Geneviene Hughes, Mae Frances Moultrie, Joseph Perkins, Charles Person, Ivor Moore, William E. Harbour, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, and Ed Blankenheim, left Washington, DC, on Greyhound and Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending in New Orleans, Louisiana, where a civil rights rally was planned. -
Nashville Student Movement - May 17 - 21, 1961
Diane Nash, a Nashville college student who was a leader of the Nashville Student Movement and SNCC, believed that if Southern violence were allowed to halt the Freedom Rides the movement would be set back years. She pushed to find replacements to resume the rides. On May 17, a new set of riders, 10 students from Nashville who were active in the Nashville Student Movement, took a bus to Birmingham, where they were arrested by Bull Connor and jailed. -
Mob Violence in Montgomery - May 20, 1961
In answer to SNCC's call, Freedom Riders from across the Eastern US joined John Lewis and Hank Thomas, the two young SNCC members of the original Ride, who had remained in Birmingham. On May 20, they attempted to resume the ride, but, terrified by the howling mob surrounding the bus depot, the drivers refused. Harassed and besieged by the mob, the riders waited all night for a bus. Under intense public pressure from the Kennedy administration, Greyhound was forced to provide a driver. -
Kennedy urges "cooling off period" May 1961
The Kennedys called for a "cooling off period" and condemned the Rides as unpatriotic because they embarrassed the nation on the world stage at the height of the Cold War. James Farmer, head of CORE, responded to Kennedy saying, "We have been cooling off for 350 years, and if we cooled off any more, we'd be in a deep freeze." The Soviet Union criticized the United States for its racism and the attacks on the Riders. -
Petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
Nonetheless, international outrage about the widely covered events and racial violence created pressure on American political leaders. On May 29, 1961, Attorney General Kennedy sent a petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) asking it to comply with the bus-desegregation ruling it had issued in November 1955, in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. That ruling had explicitly repudiated the concept of "separate but equal" in the realm of interstate bus travel. -
Summer Escalation - June 1961
CORE, SNCC, and the SCLC rejected any "cooling off period". They formed a Freedom Riders Coordinating Committee to keep the Rides rolling through June, July, August, and September. During those months, more than 60 different Freedom Rides crisscrossed the South, most of them converging on Jackson, where every Rider was arrested, more than 300 in total. An unknown number were arrested in other Southern towns. It is estimated that almost 450 people participated in one or more Freedom Rides. -
Monroe, North Carolina, and Robert F. Williams - August 27, 1961
The Freedom Riders in Monroe were brutally attacked by white supremacists with the approval of local police. On August 27, James Forman SNCC's Executive Secretary was struck unconscious with the butt of a rifle and taken to jail with numerous other demonstrators. Police and white supremacists roamed the town shooting at black civilians, who returned the gunfire. -
Desegregating Travel - October 1961
The violence and arrests continued to garner national and international attention and drew hundreds of new Freedom Riders to the cause. The rides continued over the next several months, and in the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals.
