Freedom Riders - We Need Justice!

Jeneva Moreno
5/5/15
Period: 7
Newspaper article;
Freedom Riders side

We Need Justice!!

In December of 1960, the Supreme Court rules in (Boynton v. Virginia), that segregation in interstate travel is illegal. And that as a matter of federal law integrated that travel on interstate busses and trains is a legal right. This is a huge victory!!! Therefore a group of people started the "Freedom Ride" through Rock Hill and other places in the Deep South to test the Boynton decision. Their plan is to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Their final destination is New Orleans, Louisiana. But as they go on this freedom ride, they encounter many situations that go against the Supreme Court ruling; don’t you think it’s about time they get some justice? No matter how many court cases and laws are passed, the police and FBI need to imply theses laws for their safety! The people fail to realize they are people too; segregation has gone on far too long!

 They started the freedom ride in early May of 1960 in Washington DC. The blacks that participated rode in the front of the bus; therefore the white people that would get on had sit near the back. The white people did not like this idea what so ever so in result they started many riots, mobs and beatings because of it. On May 15th a mob of more than 100 Klansmen ambushed the riders in Alabama, attacking the Greyhound bus, smashing the windows and slashing the tires. The bus tries to flee, but the attackers didn’t give up. They followed it to the outskirts of town and then set it on fire. The mob held the door shut to burn the riders alive, but lucky they were able to get off the bus, barely escaping with their lives. In result 12 people got injured and hospitalized. [pic 1]

This wasn’t the last of the injustice. The FBI knew in advance that the two busses were going to be attacked in Anniston and Birmingham, but they did nothing to prevent the violence, they did nothing to protect the riders from assault, they did nothing to enforce the Supreme Court ruling. The police even absented their selves from the crime senses. Imagine that. Even the bus drivers would walk off the bus and refuse to drive. But the Greyhound was forced to provide a driver. So on May 20th the Freedom Ride resumes. The riders received word that Alabama police would protect them. But after a couple of miles, says Fredrick Lenard, when the bus reaches the Montgomery city limits, the Highway Patrol suddenly disappears, the sheriff left, everyone left. Just before the bus arrives, all the cops who had been guarding the Greyhound terminal disappeared. When the Freedom Riders stepped off the bus, hundreds of Klansmen swarmed over them, screaming "Get the niggers!" They attack with baseball bats, broken bottles, lead pipes, sticks and bricks, leaving them bloody and battered. Even the attorney general for the president, a WHITE man, got hit with a pipe on the head for trying to stop the mob and from trying to protect two black girls.