Existing comment:
Washington, DC / May 4, 1961:
Segregation of interstate public transportation and facilities was illegal, but the law was largely ignored in the South. In the spring of 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality organized the first "Freedom Ride" to pressure the federal government to enforce the law. On May 4, students and other activists in Washington DC, boarded two buses bound for New Orleans. Danger stalked the buses as they moved South, and tensions exploded when the buses reached Alabama. A Mother's Day mob viciously assaulted the riders and firebombed the first bus outside Anniston. In Birmingham, the second bus was terrorized by a Ku Klux Klan mob backed by the police department. News footage of the burning bus and photographs of the beaten victims shocked the country. |