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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

Freedom Rides

Contents of this path:

When traveling by air, rail or bus across country on business or pleasure, I always recall the summer of 1961, when the Rides made interstate travel the democratic activity we take for granted. Racial segregation on trains or in bus stations is unthinkable today. But I remember when it was the law or custom in many places. I was raised in New Orleans, and learned early on what segregated life was like as a Negro. And I remember the Freedom Rides. In August 1961, I was one of 11 men and women who boarded a train from Los Angeles to Mississippi. We Freedom Riders — some 400 people across the U.S. — bore witness to our conviction that segregation was illegal. We were disciplined, organized and racially mixed. We rode trains, buses and planes; we sought service at dining facilities, restrooms and waiting rooms. We expected to be incarcerated and knew there could be violence directed against us. But we were committed.
On Sunday, May 14, 1961—Mother's Day—scores of angry white people blocked a Greyhound bus carrying black and white passengers through rural Alabama. The attackers pelted the vehicle with rocks and bricks, slashed tires, smashed windows with pipes and axes and lobbed a firebomb through a broken window. As smoke and flames filled the bus, the mob barricaded the door. "Burn them alive," somebody cried out. "Fry the goddamn niggers." An exploding fuel tank and warning shots from arriving state troopers forced the rabble back and allowed the riders to escape the inferno. Even then some were pummeled with baseball bats as they fled. A few hours later, black and white passengers on a Trailways bus were beaten bloody after they entered whites-only waiting rooms and restaurants at bus terminals in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama.