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Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice

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Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice RAYMOND ARSENAULT OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS FREEDOM RIDERS ALSO BY RAYMOND ARSENAULT The Wild Ass of the Ozarks: Jeff Davis and the Social Bases of Southern Politics St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888–1950 Crucible of Liberty: 200 Years of the Bill of Rights (Editor) The Changing South of Gene Patterson: Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960–1968 (Coeditor with Roy Peter Clark) Paradise Lost? The Environmental History of Florida (Coeditor with Jack E. Davis) PIVOTAL MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY Series Editors David Hackett Fischer James M. McPherson James T. Patterson Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy Maury Klein Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929 James McPherson Crossroads of Freedom: The Battle of Antietam Glenn C. Altschuler All Shook Up: How Rock ’n’ Roll Changed America David Hackett Fischer Washington’s Crossing John Ferling Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 Joel H. Silbey Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War This page intentionally left blank FREEDOM RIDERS 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice RAYMOND ARSENAULT 2006 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2006 by Raymond Arsenault Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arsenault, Raymond. Freedom riders : 1961 and the struggle for racial justice / Raymond Arsenault. p. cm. — (Pivotal moments in American history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-19-513674-6 ISBN-10: 0-19-513674-8 1. African American civil rights workers—History—20th century. 2. Civil rights workers—United States—History—20th century. 3. African Americans—Segregation—Southern States—History—20th century. 4. Segregation in transportation—Southern States—History—20th century. 5. African Americans—Civil rights—Southern States—History—20th century. 6. Civil rights movements—Southern States—History—20th century. 7. Southern States—Race relations—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series. E185.61.A69 2006 323'.0975’09046—dc22 2005018108 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For John Hope Franklin—the Freedom Writer Parts of this book previously appeared in a different form and are repub- lished with permission: “‘You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow’: CORE and the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation,” in Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South, ed. Glenn Feldman, 21–67 (Tuscaloosa: Uni- versity of Alabama Press, 2004); “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow,” Stetson Law Review 34 (Winter 2005): 343–411; “One Brick at a Time: The Mont- gomery Bus Boycott, Nonviolent Direct Action, and the Development of a National Civil Rights Movement,” in Sunbelt Revolution: The Historical Pro- gression of the Civil Rights Struggle in the Gulf South, 1866–2000, ed. Samuel C. Hyde Jr., 153–189 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003); and “Taking the Road to Freedom,” Forum 28 (Spring 2004): 30–35. Contents List of Maps x Editors’ Note xi Introduction 1 1 You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow 11 2 Beside the Weary Road 56 3 Hallelujah! I’m a-Travelin’ 93 4 Alabama Bound 140 5 Get on Board, Little Children 177 6 If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus 209 7 Freedom’s Coming and It Won’t Be Long 259 8 Make Me a Captive, Lord 304 9 Ain’t Gonna Let No Jail House Turn Me ’Round 343 10 Woke Up This Morning with My Mind on Freedom 382 11 Oh, Freedom 424 x Contents Epilogue: Glory Bound 477 Acknowledgments 527 Appendix: Roster of Freedom Riders 533 Notes 588 Bibliography 653 Index 680 Maps 1. Journey of Reconciliation, April 1947 42 2. CORE Freedom Ride, May 4–May 17, 1961 113 3. Anniston, Alabama, May 14, 1961 142 4. Birmingham, Alabama, May 14–20, 1961 152 5. Montgomery, Alabama, May 20–24, 1961 210 6. Mississippi, 1961 264 7. Jackson, Mississippi, 1961 268 8. Freedom Rides, April–December 1961 319 9. McComb and Southwestern Mississippi, Fall 1961 401 10. Albany and Southwestern Georgia, 1961–1962 453 Editors’ Note MANY AMERICANS who were alive on May 4, 1961, will remember the Free- dom Riders. On that day, thirteen activists climbed aboard buses in Wash- ington, with tickets for New Orleans. Their purpose was to challenge racial segregation in interstate travel, which the Supreme Court had declared an unconstitutional violation of human rights. They had little trouble in Virginia and North Carolina, but as the buses rolled deeper into the South, the hostility increased. In South Carolina, the beatings began. In Georgia, Martin Luther King met them and warned, “You will never make it through Alabama.” He had learned of a conspiracy by the Ku Klux Klan, the police, and local officials to stop them by brute force. The Freedom Riders pressed on with great courage, even as they knew what lay ahead. In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was stopped and set ablaze. As the Free- dom Riders ran from the smoke and flames, a mob tried to murder them, while other southerners sought to save them. The other bus reached Birmingham, and the Freedom Riders were dragged off and beaten nearly to death. These savage scenes were recorded by journalists and photographers, who were attacked as viciously as the Freedom Riders themselves. Their re- ports flashed around the world and inspired hundreds of Americans to make more than sixty Freedom Rides through the Deep South in 1961, which brought out more mobs and caused more violence. The images of these events remain fresh and vivid, but the history has grown faint and hazy, and much of it was never understood. Scarcely anyone remembers the story as it actually happened. Now at last we have the first full-scale book on the Freedom Riders, by a professional historian. Raymond Arsenault is one of the most gifted scholars of his generation. He has devoted many years of deep research to this subject. The result is truly a definitive work, which draws on unpublished writ- ings of Freedom Riders that have never been used before. The author has xii Editors’ Note also studied the papers of their mortal enemy Bull Connor, their dubious friends in Washington, John and Robert Kennedy, and forty other manu- script collections. Much of the book is based on more than two hundred personal interviews of participants, the records of more than two dozen court cases, and many film, video, and sound recordings. The author has brought together these materials with consummate skill. He also has a southern gift for story-telling. From the moment when the Freedom Riders climb aboard the bus, his narrative carries the reader along with an intensity and pace that few works of fiction are able to achieve. The story is full of surprises. We meet the Freedom Riders as individu- als, 436 of them in a fascinating appendix which is in itself a major contribu- tion. They were very diverse. No novelist could have invented Albert Bigelow, a retired captain in the U.S. Navy who became a Quaker, a pacifist, and a Freedom Rider; or Walter Bergman, a retired teacher from Michigan and a Norman Thomas socialist; or Genevieve Hughes, a beautiful young woman who worked on Wall Street at Dun and Bradstreet and was a capitalist with a social conscience. All three were severely wounded on the first Freedom Ride. Most Freedom Riders were students, black and white, some as young as thirteen, and all with their own stories to tell. Others were men and women past retirement. Many were divinity students and clergy of various denomi- nations. The Freedom Ride to Jackson, Mississippi, on September 13, 1961, called “the Prayer Pilgrimage,” consisted entirely of Episcopal ministers. In this book we learn much that is new about the major civil rights organi- zations, which were deeply divided over tactics and goals, but most found a way to work together on the Freedom Rides. The reactions of the South are also full of surprises. The author finds that every southern town responded in its own way, and the range was as broad as the limits of possibility. In one town we meet southern white women who were so consumed with insane rage that they shoved their way through a mob of men to claw the faces of the Freedom Riders, and then held up their babies so that they could claw the Riders too. In other towns we meet white southerners who gave aid and comfort and every quality of kindness. The active roles of black southerners are among the most interesting of all, and very different from what has been written. Raymond Arsenault’s book will be deeply engaging to younger readers who don’t remember the event. And the more one learns about the subject, the more absorbing it becomes. Readers who think they know President John Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, will be continually amazed by their attitudes and acts.
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