Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice Free

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See what's new with book lending at the Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice Archive. Uploaded by station3. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. Freedom riders : and the struggle for racial justice Item Preview. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! In the spring and summer ofthey put their lives on the line, riding buses through the American South to challenge segregation in interstate transport. Their story is one of the most celebrated episodes of the civil rights movement, yet a full-length history has never been written until now. In these pages, acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault provides a gripping account of six pivotal months that jolted the consciousness of America. Here is the definitive account of a dramatic and indeed pivotal moment in American history, a critical episode that transformed the civil rights movement in the early s. Raymond Arsenault offers a meticulously researched and grippingly written account of the Freedom Rides, one of the most compelling chapters in the history of civil rights. Arsenault recounts how inemboldened by federal rulings that declared segregated transit unconstitutional, a group of volunteers--blacks and whites--traveled together from Washington DC through the Deep South, Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice Jim Crow laws in buses and terminals, putting their bodies and their lives on the line for racial justice. The book paints a harrowing account of the outpouring of hatred and violence that greeted the Freedom Riders in Alabama and Mississippi. One bus was disabled by Ku Klux Klansmen, then firebombed In Birmingham and Montgomery, mobs of white supremacists swarmed the bus stations and battered the riders with fists and clubs while local police refused to intervene. The mayhem in Montgomery was captured by news photographers, shocking the nation, and sparking a crisis in the Kennedy administration, which after some hesitation and much public outcry, came to the aid of the Freedom Riders. Their courage, their fears, and the agonizing choices made by all these individuals run through the story like an electric current. The saga of the Freedom Rides is an improbable, almost unbelievable story. In the course of six months, some four hundred and fifty Riders expanded the realm of the possible in American politics, redefining the limits of dissent and setting the stage in the years to come for the Birmingham demonstrations, Freedom Summer and the Selma-to-Montgomery March. With characters and plot lines rivaling those of the most imaginative fiction, this is a tale of heroic sacrifice and unexpected triumph Includes bibliographical references pages and index You don't have to ride Jim Crow -- Beside the weary road -- Hallelujah! I'm a-travelin' -- Alabama bound -- Get on board, little children -- If you miss me from the back of the bus Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice Freedom's coming and it won't be long -- Make me a captive, Lord -- Ain't gonna let no jail house turn me 'round -- Woke up this morning with my mind on freedom -- Oh, freedom -- Epilogue : glory bound -- Appendix : roster of freedom riders Association of American Publishers Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice Award, There are no reviews yet. Be the first one to write a review. Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books. American Libraries. Freedom Riders: and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Raymond Arsenault

The recent death of Rosa Parks refocused national attention on one of the most beloved figures of the civil rights movement. But without the heroism of thousands of unsung grass-roots activists, the movement would never have accomplished what it did. In "Freedom Riders," Raymond Arsenault, a professor of history at Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice University of South Florida, rescues from obscurity the men and women who, at great personal risk, rode public buses into the South in order to challenge segregation in interstate travel. Drawing on personal papers, F. Convicted of violating local segregation laws, she appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in that segregated seating on interstate buses violated the Constitution. Inthe Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, an obscure civil rights group founded a few years earlier by Christian pacifists, organized the Journey of Reconciliation to test compliance. The trip through the upper South went off peacefully, but failed to dent the edifice of segregation. As Arsenault notes, there had been Reconstruction-era battles over integrating streetcars and railroad carriages, and lateth-century lawsuits brought by black travelers demanding equal treatment. The Freedom Rides ofalso organized by CORE, represented the latest front in a battle that had begun decades before. In most parts of the world, a bus journey would hardly have attracted attention. In the Jim Crow South ofthe Freedom Riders encountered shocking violence that deeply embarrassed the Kennedy administration. Outside Anniston, Ala. Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice riders were lucky to escape with their lives. In Birmingham, police officers gave Klan members 15 minutes to assault the riders at the bus station before intervening. The result was what Arsenault calls "one of the bloodiest afternoons in Birmingham's history. Further violence followed another group of riders in Montgomery, where John Seigenthaler, the Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice personal representative, suffered a fractured skull and several broken ribs. It took a small army of policemen and National Guard troops to escort the bus from Montgomery to Jackson, Miss. Some spent time at the infamous Parchman Farm, a prison plantation the historian David Oshinsky called "synonymous. Arsenault relates the story of the first Freedom Ride and the more than 60 that followed in dramatic, often moving detail. He reminds us of the personal courage and organizational ability of forgotten catalysts of the movement like Diane Nash, a black student leader in Nashville who helped to mobilize new groups of Freedom Riders upon hearing of the first beatings. As its title suggests, the book focuses above all on the riders themselves. Future scholars will be grateful for the appendix, which provides brief biographical information on more than of them. Unfortunately, apart from a table showing that they were overwhelmingly young three-quarters were under 30mostly male and almost equally divided between black and white, this information remains unanalyzed. But "diversity" is a description, not an interpretation. One wishes for a more detailed account of the riders' political backgrounds, organizational connections and later experiences. As Arsenault makes clear, the Freedom Rides revealed the pathology of the South. This was a society not simply of violent mobs but of judges who flagrantly disregarded the Constitution, police officers who conspired with criminals and doctors who refused to treat the injured. Southern newspapers almost universally condemned the riders as "hate mongers" and outside agitators even though about half had been born and raised in the South. Not that the national press acquitted itself much better. But the paper's editorials, while defending the right to travel, called on the riders to halt their "courageous. Most remarkable was the supine response of the Kennedy administration. Before assuming the presidency, John F. Kennedy had evinced little interest in civil rights. Once in the White House, he viewed the Freedom Rides as an unwelcome distraction from his main concern Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice the cold war. Kennedy's first impulse was to try to keep details of the violence out of the press. In the midst of the crisis, he delivered a special address to Congress. Remembered today for its pledge to put a man on the moon, it dealt primarily with international affairs, identifying the "southern half of the globe" as "the great battleground for the expansion of freedom today. The attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, comes off rather better. Initially as impatient with the riders as his brother, Robert Kennedy became emotionally committed to their cause. It was he who petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to ban segregation in interstate bus travel. The result was an order that brought the Freedom Rides to a triumphant end. Overall, the administration's response calls into question a staple of recent writing on the civil rights movement -- that the cold war created a favorable context for racial change. Certainly, the photographs that flashed across the world embarrassed the White House. But the conflict with the Soviets also inspired deep distrust of any movement that included critics of American foreign policy. After a telephone conversation in which he urged Martin Luther King Jr. The cold war did not produce a significant change in federal policy. That, as both the Freedom Riders and King knew, required a social movement. Indeed, of the civil rights leaders touched on in this book, King comes across as the most supportive of the young activists. We sometimes forget how young King himself was at this time. Only 32 inhe was closer in age to the riders than to the older civil rights establishment. In his conversation with Robert Kennedy, King refused to heed an appeal for moderation: "I am different from my father. I feel the need of being free now. Books Bound for Glory. By Raymond Arsenault. Oxford University Press. Home Page World U.

Arsenault history, Univ. Freedom Riders : and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Raymond Arsenault. They were black and white, young and old, men and women. In the spring and summer ofthey put their lives on the line, riding buses through the American South to challenge segregation in interstate transport. Their story is one of the most celebrated episodes of the civil rights movement, yet a full-length history has never been written until now. In these pages, acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault provides a gripping account of six pivotal months that jolted the consciousness of Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. The Freedom Riders were greeted with hostility, fear, and violence. They were jailed and beaten, their buses stoned and firebombed. In Alabama, police stood idly by as racist thugs battered them. Arsenault recreates these moments with heart-stopping immediacy. His tightly braided narrative reaches from the White House--where the Kennedys were just awakening to the moral power of the civil rights struggle--to the cells of Mississippi's infamous Parchman Prison, where Riders tormented their jailers with rousing freedom anthems. Along the way, he offers vivid portraits of dynamic figures such as James Farmer, Diane Nash, John Lewis, and Fred Shuttlesworth, recapturing the drama of an improbable, almost unbelievable saga of heroic sacrifice and unexpected triumph. The Riders were widely criticized as reckless provocateurs, or "outside agitators. Freedom Riders is a stunning achievement, a masterpiece of storytelling that will stand alongside the finest works on the history of civil rights. Roster of Freedom Riders. Freedom Riders and the Struggle for Racial Justice: and the A graduate of Princeton and Brandeis, he is the author of two prize-winning books and numerous articles on race, civil rights, and regional culture. Freedom Riders Abridged: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice Bound.