As I've been writing about the history we learned about and saw on our visit to the American South this past May, I've been adding a year (in parentheses) to the title of each blog post. That's not to suggest that what I'm writing about in each post is a discrete event confined to just that year. More often than not, events in the 1950s and 1960s that moved the Civil Rights Movement incrementally forward were years in the making. But they did ultimately result in an end point of some sort, and hence the date attached to each post.
Plus it allows me to keep the timing straight in what I find to be a confusing and complicated chronology. Which brings us to 1961. And the Freedom Rides.
Just like my posts about the murder of Emmett Till and the disgraceful reaction to some high school children trying to get a better education in Arkansas, this post about the Freedom Rides is full of what I consider to be shocking, vicious and just out and out cruel and hate-filled violence towards strangers really doing nothing to anybody at all. It also unfortunately contains a good amount of courtroom ennui. Bear with me on that last part. Again.
Let's handle that courts stuff first, shall we?
In 1896, the United States Supreme Court dealt an enormous blow to non-white people in this country by ruling that states, cities and towns that segregated facilities on the basis of race were not violating the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided equal protections under the law regardless of race. The case of Plessy v. Ferguson argued before the Court was specifically about train cars in New Orleans based on a law passed by the Louisiana Legislature six years earlier, but the ruling allowed widespread segregation everywhere immediately. Anything and everything white people didn't want to share with black people got separated. The Court's ruling specifically addressed separate "but equal" accommodations, but local jurisdictions didn't worry too much about the equal part of it.
 |
| Civil Rights Memorial. Montgomery, Alabama. |
I think one of the things about the South's history of segregation that is the most upsetting for me is this history of separate but equal (but really unequal) accommodations for white and black (or "colored" as the signs back then would say) people. Drinking fountains. Hotels. Restaurants. Entrances to buildings. Waiting rooms in bus stations. You name it. It is a concept that is laced with passive aggression that continually let one group of people know they were not in any way in charge. It's uncomfortable. It's demeaning. It's obviously not right. We saw some of this in museums, particularly in the Birmingham (Alabama) Civil Rights Institute. The only place we really saw this in person was in our time chasing the story of the Freedom Riders. But we'll get to that soon.
Eventually, other lawsuits not related to states and towns and the Fourteenth Amendment (since there was already legal precedent from Plessy v. Ferguson) started to make their way through the legal system and some of these also found their way to the highest court in the land. In 1946, in the case of Morgan v. Virginia, the Supreme Court agreed with the NAACP's argument that segregated seating sections on a Greyhound bus that crossed state lines (key distinction there) violated the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. As of that ruling, separate but equal or unequal or just plain separate seating sections based on race on interstate buses were no longer legal anywhere. Problem solved, right?
Not so much. A decision of the United States Supreme Court was one thing. Actually getting states to change the rules was another. Nothing changed. Because nobody forced any change.
Fourteen years after Morgan v. Virginia came Boynton v. Virginia. The ruling by the Supreme Court in that case held that separate eating facilities in bus stations serving interstate travel violated the Interstate Commerce Act. So in addition to separate seating areas on buses being illegal, so were separate accommodations in stations, including waiting areas, restaurants, bathrooms and drinking fountains. Now the problem was solved, right?
Still no. Nothing changed because nobody in the south was inclined to change anything. States from Virginia on south continued to enforce separate facilities based on race just because that's what they were accustomed to and it was what they believed was right. And the Federal Government wasn't really inclined to make them change.
 |
| The corner of Fourth Avenue and 19th Street North, Birmingham, AL. |
On May 4, 1961, 13 volunteers (including future United States Congressman John Lewis) boarded two buses (one Greyhound bus and one Trailways bus) in Washington, D.C. bound for New Orleans. Those 13 were the first Freedom Riders. They passed through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia before crossing into Alabama. Things got bad when they got to Alabama. Not that there weren't incidents before that. But when they passed into Alabama it got really bad.
Those first Freedom Riders were a deliberately diverse group. They were black and white, men and women and ranged in age from 18 to 61. That diversity was important. This was not one segment of society taking a stand. Plus they needed people of different skin colors to they could deliberately sit next to one another.
The first stop in Alabama was in the town of Anniston. The Ku Klux Klan lay in wait; they were determined to not let the Freedom Riders leave the state of Alabama, which really meant they intended to kill them. For riding a bus.
When the Trailways bus arrived in Anniston, eight Klan members boarded the bus and beat some of the Freedom Riders unconscious. Just like that. Hand to hand beating of some people who didn't fight back until they were no longer conscious. The Greyhound bus and its riders weren't so lucky. That bus had its tires slashed in Anniston and was stopped a bit outside of the town. 30 to 40 cars (!!!) worth of Klan members following the bus threw a firebomb into the disabled vehicle and then barred the door so the Riders couldn't escape. It didn't work; everyone got out. But the Klan intended to burn people alive inside a bus for doing absolutely nothing except riding that bus.
We didn't visit Anniston. We just didn't have time. But in the aftermath of the bombing, a 12 year old girl got the Freedom Riders some water after they escaped the bus. The Klan discussed retribution against the girl but ultimately decided she was too young. It is a measure of the character of the people in the KKK, I think, that they even had a discussion. How many years too young was she for a group of grown men in hoods to hold off punishing her? One? Two? I'm thinking it's not much more than that. And what would be the punishment? Lynching? The Klan liked lynchings. Or maybe burn her parents' house down? That was another Klan favorite.
 |
| Burned out Greyhound bus. National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis. |
I can't wrap my brain around how you attack another person with this level of violence for doing nothing except riding a bus with someone of a different skin color who you happen to feel is unequal. I don't know what makes someone continue to beat another human being who is not fighting back at all. To the point of death if necessary.
Eventually, the Birmingham police showed up. They had coordinated with the Klan to allow them 15 minutes to do whatever they wanted to do to the Riders. The FBI had infiltrated the Klan in Alabama and also knew what was going to happen and did nothing. Let me repeat that: the FBI knew there was going to be an attack on defenseless people doing nothing more than following a federal law that Anniston and Birmingham were refusing to endorse and they didn't stop it.
I think we often think of John F. Kennedy as a progressive, compassionate, forward-thinking president. And maybe he was for his time. The press coverage of the attacks in Anniston and Birmingham forced him to act but he wasn't happy about it. He considered the Freedom Riders unpatriotic and resented that the Riders were making the United States look bad on the world stage. He tried to make it go away by convincing those organizing the Freedom Rides to stop. They wouldn't. The first Freedom Rides did stop in Birmingham after the attacks in Anniston and Birmingham but less than two weeks later, 20 students from Nashville boarded a Greyhound bus in Birmingham bound for New Orleans. Kennedy arranged for the Alabama State Highway Patrol to provide an escort.
 |
| The old Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, AL. Now the Freedom Rides Museum. |
"Out of nowhere, from every direction, came people. White people. Hundreds of them...as if they'd been let out of a gate. They carried every makeshift weapon imaginable. Baseball bats, wooden boards, bricks, chains, tire irons, pipes, even garden tools - hoes and rakes."
Of course the result was the same as it was in Birmingham: white people beating black and white bus riders who were offering no defense. Jim Zwerg, a white college student from Fisk University, was beaten unconscious and had his teeth knocked out. When John Siegenthaler, an assistant to United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy who was sent to Montgomery by the Kennedy administration, attempted to intervene to assist two of the Riders, he was knocked unconscious by a man with a metal pipe.
There was one difference between Birmingham and Montgomery: the press was out in force in Montgomery. So the crowd took care to smash any equipment that would record the events that happened outside the Greyhound station before they started their assault. Then there was no difference between Birmingham and Montgomery. Although Montgomery lasted longer.
The beatings encountered by the Freedom Riders in Montgomery on May 20, 1961 was the last of its kind. After that day, the Kennedy administration made a deal with the governors of Alabama and Mississippi whereby law enforcement would protect the Riders from mob violence in exchange for those states being able to arrest the Riders for breaking local laws. Yes, you read that right. The federal government agreed to allow people breaking local laws (that were in violation of federal laws) to be arrested.
Standing in the Freedom Rides museum in downtown Montgomery today learning about all this history is just crazy. It's crazy that any of it had to happen at all but the hatred involved and the sheer viciousness in these attacks is just shocking. It's also incomprehensible to me that the federal government has to agree to let states violate federal law just to stop violent mobs beating people doing no harm and complying with the law.
The other perspective I gained from the Freedom Rides Museum is standing in a place that was once segregated and being able to see where white people were allowed to go that black people were not. When you first walk into the Museum there is a floor plan of the original bus station on the wall. From that spot you can see where the white waiting room was and the "colored" waiting room was. You can do the same for the bathrooms. Just feeling where those invisible barriers were that were rigorously enforced was pretty creepy. This was less than 60 years ago that this stuff was in place.
If you look at the front facade of the old Greyhound station today, there is an entrance door just to right of the center of the building covered with a canopy. To the left of that there is another opening that looks like it has been closed up. You can still see the stone trim that defined the edge of the opening. That was the "colored" entrance (no canopy of course). Different skin color. Different door. It's craziness. All to let one group of people know that they were inferior in the eyes of those making the decisions in our society. We got this perspective nowhere else on our trip. Nowhere else did we feel this aura of separation from 50 or 60 years ago in quite the same way.
 |
| The former "colored" entrance to the Montgomery Greyhound bus station. |
After May 20, the Kennedy administration wanted the Freedom Rides to go on hold for a while. Just sweep it under the rug for a while. CORE and SNCC (or Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) didn't agree. They continued to send Riders throughout the summer and most all of those people ended up unjustly arrested and held in Parchman Farm, Mississippi's maximum security prison.
I think it's worth thinking about the situation the Riders were putting themselves in. At best, they'd end up arrested and sent to prison. And a really dangerous prison at that. At worst, they would end up being beaten within an inch of their lives or actually dead. Some of them actually made sure they had an up to date last will and testament in place in the event they were killed. For riding a bus. The reward was ending desegregation in bus stations in the South. For this, they were willing to die.
On November 1, 1961, under threat of demonstrators descending on Washington, D.C., and after CORE and SNCC had sent hundreds of Freedom Riders into Mississippi prisons, the Interstate Commerce Commission finally issued direction to desegregate bus stations. Who knows how long it would have taken for this to happen if the Kennedy administration and the federal government had convinced the Freedom Rides organizers to pause or stop. Finally those signs in bus stations in Virginia and points south separating people by skin color would be coming down. I imagine the days those signs actually were removed felt like a little bit of a victory.
I keep thinking about what the atmosphere on those buses must have been like. Think about it. When and how and where was the next attack coming from would be all I'd be thinking about. And if I'd make it out alive or be sleeping in a hospital bed that night. And how much pain I'd be in after being beaten. These are not things I want to think about. There is a long list of people associated with the Civil Rights Movement whose courage I admire. The people that took those bus rides into the South in 1961 knowing they might never come back are definitely on that list.
The Freedom Riders sang songs on the buses to help them through the rides and (I'm just speculating here) put off some of those thoughts that I would be wondering about while seated on one of those buses. One of those songs was called Hallelujah, I'm A Travelin' which is why it's the title of this blog post.
How We Did It
A search for sites related to the Freedom Riders is not going to turn up a whole lot. Sure, there are exhibits in museums like the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute that cover the subject matter and provide essential background. In many ways, a tour of multiple cities and sites (and museums) in a few days reinforces stories like the Freedom Rides where little physical evidence of what took place actually exists. There is a brand new (as of this writing) Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston with two sites (the old Greyhound station and the location where the bus was firebombed) but neither site right now is anything more than a drive by.
We chased the Freedom Riders in two cities: Birmingham and Montgomery, both in Alabama. There is little more in Birmingham than the Freedom Riders sign shown in the blog post above but if you are in town anyway to visit the Civil Rights Institute, Kelly Ingram Park or the 16th Street Baptist Church, it's worth a stop for a quick picture.
In Montgomery, we spent some time walking through the Freedom Rides Museum on South Court Street about a half a mile from the Alabama State Capitol. The Museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday. It's a pretty small museum; really just one room with a series of narrative exhibits. But the real value for me was standing in a building still bearing the evidence (albeit very difficult to interpret) of a segregated station. I found it way worth the visit for that sensation alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment