See: Boynton v. Virgnia

Background: May 14, 1961, began as a quiet Mother’s Day on northern Alabama.  Yet some
very violent events were to take place there before the holiday was over.  According to James
Peck, here is what happened:

 “...When the Greyhound bus pulled into Anniston, it was immediately surrounded by an
angry mob armed withy iron bars.  They set upon the vehicle denting the sides, breaking the
windows and slashing tires.  Finally, police arrived and the bus managed to depart.  But the mob
pursued it in cars.  One car got ahead of the bus and prevented it from gathering speed.  About
six miles out, one of the tires went flat and the bus was forced to pull over to a gas station.

 Within minutes, the pursuing mob was again hitting the bus with iron bars. The rear
window was broken and a bomb was hurled inside.  Suddenly the vehicle became filled with
thick smoke.  The passenger...ducked toward the floor in order to breathe.  A few climbed out of
a window.  Some tried to get out the door, but it was being held shut from theoutside.

 As Henry Thomas tells it, he shortly succeeded in pushing the door open.  As he stepped
out, he walked toward a man who looked friendly.  Suddenly the man wielded a club from
behind his back and struck him over the head.

 All the passengers managed to escape before the bus burst into flames and was totally
destroyed...Policemen, who had been standing by belatedly came on the scene.  A couple of them
fired shots in the air.  The mob dispersed and the injured were taken to a local hospital...
 When the Trailways bus carrying...(us) arrived in Anniston an hour later, the other
passengers learned of what had happened to the Greyhound bus and discontinued their trip.
While waiting for the bus to proceed, we heard the sirens of ambulances taking the injured to the
hospital, but we didn’t know what had happened.

 We learned of it only when eight hoodlums climbed aboard and stood by the driver as he
made a brief announcement.  He concluded by stating that he would refuse to drive on unless the
Negroes in our group moved to the formerly segregated rear seats.  They remained quietly in
their front seats.  The hoodlums cursed and started to move the bodily to the rear, kicking and
hitting them at the same time.

 Walter Bergman, who is a retired professor, and I were seated toward the rear.  We
moved forward and tried to persuade the hoodlums to desist.  We, too, were pushed, punched and
kicked.  I found myself face downward on the floor of the bus.  Someone was on top of me.  I
was bleeding.  Bergman’s jaw was cut and swollen.  None of us realized that he had  received a
crushing blow on the head which would bring him close to death four months later...

 Mrs. Bergman, who observed the beating, commented later, “I had never before heard the
sound of human flesh being hit; it was terrible!”

 Finally all of our group - whites and blacks..had been forced to the back of the bus.  The
hoodlums - together with a pregnant woman whom they had brought aboard - sat in the very
front.  The seats in between remained empty...”

 The passengers involved in this violence were a group of six whites and seven blacks
who had set out from Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, on what was called a “Freedom Ride”

 In 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court had declared it illegal to require black bus passengers
traveling across state lines to sit in the back of buses.  In 1958, the Courts had also declared
illegal the segregation of waiting rooms, lunch counters, and rest rooms in bus stations.  In 1961,
these separate facilities still existed throughout the Southern states.  Furthermore, blacks were
still expected to sit on the back seats of busses.

 The Freedom Riders had set out to deliberately defy these segregation practices.  White
and black Freedom Riders sat side by side in the busses, some sat on the front seats of the bus
and others sat on the back seats.  When the bus stopped at a segregated bus terminal, black
Freedom Riders attempted to get served at the “white only” lunch counters, and they used “white
only” restrooms.  These Freedom Riders experienced only minor problems until that Mother’s
Day on May 14, 1961.

 After the incidents near Anniston, the Freedom Riders found more trouble in
Birmingham, Alabama.  James, Peck, the Freedom Rider who wrote the account above continued
his story:

 “...Upon arrival in Birmingham, I could only see a mob lined up on the sidewalk only a
few feet from the loading platform. Most of them were young - in their twenties.  Some were
carrying ill-concealed iron bars.  A few were older men.  All had hate showing on the faces...
 As we entered the white waiting room and approached the lunch counter, we were
grabbed bodily and pushed toward the alleyway leading to the loading platform.  As soon as we
got into the alleyway and out of sight of onlookers in the waiting room, six of them sarted
swinging at me with fists and pipes...

 Within seconds, I was unconscious on the ground.  I learned only later the mob went on
to assault Tom Langston of the Birmingham Post-Herald and smashed his camera.  Langston had
been sufficiently quick-witted to removed his film and the photo of my beating, clearly showing
the hate-filled expression of my attackers appeared in the next morning’s paper and in many
newspapers throughout the country.  Then,  Clancy Lake, a radio was attacked as he sat in his
car, broadcasting an account of the onslaught.

 When I regained consciousness, the alleyway was empty.  Blood was flowing down my face. I
tried to stop the flow with a handkerchief but it soon became soaked.  A white soldier came out
of the waiting room to see whether I needed help...
 

 Local mobs in Birmingham were acting illegally when they used violence against the
Freedom Riders.  Segregated bus terminals were also illegal.

 A police official in one southern city said, “The people on the ‘Freedom’ bus were sent in
to stir up trouble.  They succeeded”.

 Gordon Carey, an official of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an organization
that helped plan the Freedom Ride, was asked about the strategy of his group.
 Q. What is the objective that you seek in the South at this time?
 A. Well, the objective in the South is the same as our objective throughout the country: to
create the open society.  To create a brotherhood of man.
 Q. Is that objective nearer or farther from realization as a result of the recent violence?
 A. I think the objective is closer.  I think that the tension of the present day may some
what could the objective, and may somewhat cloud the result.  But CORE is absolutely certain
that if our actions are correct and if our attitude is correct, we cannot bad results from these good
actions.
 Q. Are you determined to push ahead, even if it does mean violence?
 A. I would say the CORE certainly will not perpetrate violence.  All of our people are
dedicated to a policy of strict non-violence.
 Q But, if it results in violence–
 A. Well, we cannot always control the actions of the so-called adversary, and if they
choose to use violence against us, this is really their choice and their responsibility.
 Q. Has this whole effort been planned carefully?
 A. Yes- certainly.  No question but it was planned very carefully.  The “Freedom Ride”
itself has been in the planning for six months.”

 On May 25, 1961, Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi made a speech on the floor
of the U.S. Senate in which he charged that the Freedom Riders,”...were sent for the sold purpose
of stirring up discord, strife and violence”.

 Some Americans felt that since the South was breaking the law by continuing to
segregate its bus terminals the Freedom Riders had a right to do anything necessary to get the
federal government to enforce the Supreme Court’ decision against segregated transportation
facilities, even if this included a deliberate attempt to cause a riot.

Were the Freedom Rides a threat to Law and Order? On June 5, 1961 U.S. News and World
Report printed an article entitled: “Is the South Headed for a Race War”?

“...Reported from Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta and Jackson.

All through the Deep South, tension between Negroes and whites is rising once again.
In the riotous wake of the Freedom rides” across Alabama and Mississippi, there is growing
concern that even more serious violence lies ahead...

Instead of going into court to file suits, as in the past, integrationists now are sending organized
groups into the south to make open challenges of segregation laws and customs...
These groups stress ‘nonviolence’ and train their racially mixed teams in techniques of passive
resistance.

First result of their campaign, however has been violence - breaking out in one place after
another.  White mobs attacked Negroes and their white allies in Anniston, Birmingham and
Montgomery, Alabama.  There were arrests in Jackson, Mississippi.

     U.S. marshals - 600 of them- were sent into Montgomery.  Alabama’s Governor John
Patterson declared martial law and sent hundreds of armed National Guardsmen into that city.
     What touched of this wave of violence were the so-called “freedom Rides” across the south.
These rides began in the North...

    On may 20, rioting broke out in Montgomery, Ala.  A white mob beat and kicked several of
the Freedom Riders and a representative of the U.S. Justice Department.  Police were slow in
moving to halt the violence.

      U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy immediately ordered U.S. marshals to the scene.
    The next day, Governor Patterson proclaimed marital law as a Montgomery mob menaced
Negroes meeting in a church to hear a speech by Martin Luther King.  National Guardsmen
helped police and U.S. marshals turn back the mob.

    A chain reaction: On May 24, “Freedom riders” invaded Mississippi.  In that state, police
escorted the 27 riders safely to Jackson, the capital- and then arrested them on charges of breach
of the peace and disobeying police officers.
    On May 26, in a Jackson municipal court, all 27 were found guilty of breach of the peace.
They were given 60-day suspended jail terms, fined $200 each.
    But all along the route, new groups of Freedom Riders kept forming.  It turned a succession of
waves, battering the South with one challenge after another...
     Talk with Southerners, and you get such statements as:
     “The South is in such a state now that another blow-up like the “freedom riders” , another
spark or two, and you have armed bands in the streets>’
   The editor of one of the South’s largest newspapers gave this warning:
    “There’s no....(idea) in the North or West of the potential danger or the depth of feeling here in
the South.  Many Southerners feels they have been pushed too far and too fast.   Race riots - and
I refer to large scale race riots - can break out.    Riots in the new South won’t be a case only of
whites killing blacks, either.  This time the Nero will be doing some of the killing.”

Important events that happened in 1961:

1. On May 29, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked the Interstate Commerce
Commission, a government agency responsible for enforcing laws and decisions concerning
transportation and trade across state lines, to issue orders requiring an end to segregation of bus
terminals.
2. On September 22, the ICC issued orders to end segregation of inter-state bus terminals.
3 On November 1, these orders became effective.

Louis E. Lomax, an award winning writer concluded:

“On final count the freedom rides (actually there at least a dozen of them) involved over a
thousand persons..The rides themselves cost an estimated $20,000 and legal expenses that grew
out of them exceeded $300,000.  The rides did the job, however and...interstate terminal
segregation is a thing of the past.  Some cities in the deep south are still holding out but the issue
is about settled”.

Consider:  Were the rides justified if they resulted in violence?  Do you have a reasonable expectation of being met with violence?  Can peaceful groups be prohibited from taking action which might result in violence? Should you respond violently if met with violence on the ride? Why would organizers have wanted Freedom Riders who would not retaliate?

African - American History - Freedom Rides

Civil Rights Movement in America - Freedom Rides
http://www.sidwell.edu/~lcozzens/civilrights/freedom-rides.html

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) - Freedom Rides