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Events Involving the Freedom Rides
After the incident in Anniston, Alabama, SNCC students from the Nashville freedom movement, led by Diane Nash, resumed the Freedom Rides to Mississippi. On May 20, a group of Freedom Riders boarded a Birmingham-to-Montgomery Greyhound bus. They were met in Montgomery by a riotous mob. Among the injured was John Seigenthaler (b. 1927), a Justice Department aide. Throughout the summer more than 300 Freedom Riders came by bus, plane, and train to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested on breach of peace and jailed in Parchman Prison. This document chronicles events involving the Freedom Rides and corresponding actions taken by civil rights organizations and government agencies from May 21 to July 19, 1961. |