#Free rider definition government driver

In this confused situation, there is increasingly possibility that innocent persons may be injured. Besides the groups of 'Freedom Riders' traveling through these states, there are curiosity seekers, publicity seekers and others who are seeking to serve their own causes, as well as many persons who are traveling because they must use the interstate carriers to reach their destination. “A very difficult condition exists now in the states of Mississippi and Alabama.

Attorney General Kennedy issued a statement urging a “cooling off” period in the face of the growing violence: However, those who attempted to use the whites-only facilities were arrested for trespassing and taken to the maximum-security penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi. There, several hundred supporters greeted the riders. On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders departed Montgomery for Jackson, Mississippi. Patterson declared martial law in the city and dispatched the National Guard to restore order. Kennedy summoned the federal marshals, who used tear gas to disperse the white mob.

A riot ensued outside the church, and King called Robert Kennedy to ask for protection. led a service at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, which was attended by more than one thousand supporters of the Freedom Riders. The following night, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Attorney General Kennedy sent 600 federal marshals to the city to stop the violence. The violence toward the Freedom Riders was not quelled-rather, the police abandoned the Greyhound bus just before it arrived at the Montgomery, Alabama, terminal, where a white mob attacked the riders with baseball bats and clubs as they disembarked. The rides finally resumed, on a Greyhound bus departing Birmingham under police escort, on May 20.

#Free rider definition government driver

Kennedy, began negotiating with Governor John Patterson of Alabama and the bus companies to secure a driver and state protection for the new group of Freedom Riders. However, Diane Nash, an activist from the SNCC, organized a group of 10 students from Nashville, Tennessee, to continue the rides. Photographs of the burning Greyhound bus and the bloodied riders appeared on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country and around the world the next day, drawing international attention to the Freedom Riders’ cause and the state of race relations in the United States.įollowing the widespread violence, CORE officials could not find a bus driver who would agree to transport the integrated group, and they decided to abandon the Freedom Rides. Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor stated that, although he knew the Freedom Riders were arriving and violence awaited them, he posted no police protection at the station because it was Mother’s Day. The second bus, a Trailways vehicle, traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, and those riders were also beaten by an angry white mob, many of whom brandished metal pipes. The Freedom Riders escaped the bus as it burst into flames, only to be brutally beaten by members of the surrounding mob. The mob followed the bus in automobiles, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. There, an angry mob of about 200 white people surrounded the bus, causing the driver to continue past the bus station. On May 14, 1961, the Greyhound bus was the first to arrive in Anniston, Alabama. Lewis, a Democrat, continued to represent Georgia's 5th Congressional District, which includes Atlanta, until his death in 2020. House of Representatives in November 1986. The next day, the group reached Atlanta, Georgia, where some of the riders split off onto a Trailways bus.ĭid you know? John Lewis, one of the original group of 13 Freedom Riders, was elected to the U.S.

John Lewis, an African American seminary student and member of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), white Freedom Rider and World War II veteran Albert Bigelow and another Black rider were viciously attacked as they attempted to enter a whites-only waiting area. The first violent incident occurred on May 12 in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina, drawing little public notice. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of the nation’s public schools was unconstitutional. Their plan was to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 17 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. The original group of 13 Freedom Riders-seven African Americans and six whites-left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus on May 4, 1961.