May 4, 1961 --The Original Freedom Riders

Although other attempts at breaking the color barrier on public transportation and in public accommodations had been attempted before, May 4, 1961 is generally regarded as the official start of the Freedom Riders campaign to protest segregation and other "Jim Crow" policies in the American South.  Despite US Supreme Court rulings outlawing discrimination of this type, the laws were still enforced throughout the South and other regions of the country.

​The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. They called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, and other alleged offenses, but often they first let white mobs attack them without intervention.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored most of the subsequent Freedom Rides, but some were also organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Freedom Rides, beginning in 1960, followed dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters conducted by students and youth throughout the South, and boycotts of retail establishments that maintained segregated facilities.

Image: A mob beat Freedom Riders in Birmingham. This picture was reclaimed by the FBI from a local journalist, Tommy Langston,  who also was beaten and whose camera was smashed.