Freedom rides and civil rights marches

Freedom rides

As with eating areas and schools, there was resistance to buses and bus stations. In May 1961, the organised ‘freedom rides’. On these rides, black Americans deliberately broke customs and laws. This was to highlight that despite the ruling that segregation on buses was unconstitutional, there had been little change across the South.

A photograph of Freedom Riders looking at a smoking bus which had been set alight — Figure caption,
A burning bus that had been carrying Freedom Riders before it was attacked at Anniston, Alabama, in the summer of 1961

The first freedom ride was on 4 May 1961 and it went from Washington, DC, to New Orleans. It travelled through many of the southern states.

In Anniston, Alabama, one bus had its windows smashed and a petrol bomb thrown into it, but the passengers escaped unharmed.
When the next bus reached Anniston, the passengers were taken off the bus and attacked by an angry mob of white Americans.
were also attacked in Birmingham and Montgomery, in Alabama. Others were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.

The police did little to help the Freedom Riders, so President John F Kennedy sent to protect them. In September 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission ordered that buses and bus stations must be desegregated immediately.

Birmingham march, 1963

By the spring of 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, became the focus of civil rights protests. This was because the authorities had done nothing to desegregate public facilities and nearly half the population were black Americans. Birmingham had no black police officers, firefighters, bus drivers or store cashiers. Only 10 per cent of the city’s black population was registered to vote. The civil rights leaders in Birmingham realised that there were two factors that could help them to get publicity for their protests:

The local commissioner for public safety, Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor, held racist views.
Birmingham had a lot of members of the If these people reacted violently to the protesters, it would generate a lot of media coverage that was sympathetic to the civil rights cause.

The first civil rights march, in April 1963, ended with Dr Martin Luther King Jnr and other leaders of the march being arrested and put in prison. While in prison, King wrote ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’, which explained the case for continuing to protest and for an end to

At the beginning of May, a second set of marches began. Many of the marchers were young people, mostly teenagers, but some were as young as six years old. The marches were known as the ‘children’s crusade’. The police arrested so many protesters that the prisons were full, and they used police dogs and water cannons to force the protesters off the streets. This was seen on television and in photographs around the world. It created a lot of sympathy for the protesters.

A photograph of groups of people huddled against a wall, trying to escape the water cannon being sprayed at them — Image caption,
Police using water cannons against protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, May 1963

President Kennedy sent a representative to negotiate an end to the protests. George Wallace (the of Alabama) and the Ku Klux Klan tried to stop this, but the white Americans who owned businesses wanted the protests to end. Birmingham began to desegregate, and the protests ended. Kennedy was now convinced that America needed a Civil Rights Act to give African Americans equality and to make sure these protests did not happen again.

March on Washington, 1963

In August 1963, was debating President Kennedy’s civil rights Many of the civil rights organisations - including the the and the - organised a joint march in Washington, DC, to show their support for the bill. Some worried that this would lead to violent clashes with protesters. Kennedy asked for the march to be called off in case it damaged the chances of the bill being passed.

The Lincoln Memorial commemorates the life of Abraham Lincoln, the president who introduced the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. In front of it, around 250,000 people gathered to hear speeches and music about the need to improve civil rights. It is estimated that between 20 and 25 per cent of the people marching were white. The final speech of the day was by King. In this complex speech, known as ‘I Have a Dream’, he explained how he hoped that black and white Americans could live together as equals, linking his beliefs to the American dream and the US Constitution.

Despite the profile of women in the like Rosa Parks and Ella Baker, women were given limited roles. For example, they sang or introduced male speakers at the event. Prominent women were instructed to walk in a group behind the male leaders, meaning King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, couldn’t walk beside her husband. The limited role of women at this event highlighted the inequalities in both race and gender in America.

The March on Washington further raised the profile of the civil rights movement and increased awareness if the effectiveness of peaceful protest. However, there was still a lot of resistance to equality in Congress, and violence against black Americans continued. President Kennedy was in November 1963, but his successor, Lyndon B Johnson, managed to get Kennedy’s civil rights law passed in 1964.

Role of government in improving civil rights in the 1960s

Campaigns of the civil rights movement in the 1960s

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Civil rights in the USA 1954-1964 - OCR AFreedom rides and civil rights marches