60 years ago this past Tuesday, May 4th, a small group of black and white men and women of various ages departed Washington D.C. on a Greyhound bus bound for New Orleans. Nothing too special about this except a member of this group was John Lewis (who died July 2020), and they started what became known as The Freedom Riders.
Six years earlier, the Supreme Court ruled that bus lines can no longer be segregated along racial lines. We know the story, the bus lines in the south continued to follow Jim Crow laws ignoring the federal mandate to desegregate.
This group never made it to New Orleans. They were beaten with the savage brutality of white supremacy with the assurance by the local police in Birmingham, lead by Bull Connor, to give the beatings time before finally intervening. It was plain to see for all who had eyes and over 400 people took part in dozens of Freedom Rides over the course of the summer of ’61.
These rides drew national attention to the brutality of white supremacy and the flagrant disregard by the Southern states, business, and law enforcement to uphold federal law. These rides were political protest by blacks and whites who rode together against segregation. These rides were based on the principles of non-violence and in stark contrast stood those in power who violently beat them for following the law.
Who today is willing to ride and join our brothers and sisters of color to demand equal treatment under the law? Yes, we thought we had gained a lot of inroads to racism yet it is hard not to see the country spiraling swiftly downhill into many of the same types of injustices that were present during the summer of ’61. Is there something today that flips our switch to protest the government’s non-enforcement of anti-segregation laws or was that just so yesterday?
