Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Daddy and I'm to bleed in Chuck Reporting.
Speaker 1: And this September we are commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of
Speaker 1: the Interstate Commerce Commissions ruling that all interstate bus and
Speaker 1: train facilities in the US had to pull down signs
Speaker 1: segregating whites and blacks. And it was the result of
Speaker 1: summer long effort by a group that called themselves the
Speaker 1: Freedom Writers to test laws that were already on the books.
Speaker 1: But we're just largely ignored through many Southern states. So
Speaker 1: picking up where we left off, the original core writers
Speaker 1: have been badly beaten, traumatized, and essentially evacuated out of
Speaker 1: Birmingham for New Orleans by a special assistant to Attorney
Speaker 1: General Robert Kennedy. And it seemed like at this time
Speaker 1: that the Freedom Ride that had started May four, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one in d C was over at this point. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and we should we should say too, Like, if you
Speaker 1: are a listener who drops in on Random podcast, it
Speaker 1: really is worth going back and checking out that first
Speaker 1: episode because it will help give you the context you
Speaker 1: need for this one is a part two, but we
Speaker 1: left it a real cliffhanger there. That was that was
Speaker 1: a crucial moment there in New Orleans defeated. It seems
Speaker 1: the Kennedy's feel that things are wrapped up to their satisfaction,
Speaker 1: but then suddenly they get news out of Nashville that
Speaker 1: things aren't over at all. Right. Students in Nashville, many
Speaker 1: of them were veterans of the lunch counter sit ins,
Speaker 1: though still in their teens in early twenties, they decided
Speaker 1: that the ride could not end in violence. So, spearheaded
Speaker 1: by Diane Nash, who was a Fisk student, many members
Speaker 1: of the Nashville student movement decided to skip their finals
Speaker 1: and go to Alabama. Yeah, get on a bus and
Speaker 1: they completely know what's at stake. This is the part
Speaker 1: that's just crazy to me. They make their wills, these
Speaker 1: young kids, and they board busses to Birmingham. Nash, who
Speaker 1: coordinates the whole thing from home base in Nashville, basically
Speaker 1: tells the Birmingham pasture, we're coming. Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: the wills is the really shocking part. But the leaving
Speaker 1: before finals is a really big deal too, because a
Speaker 1: lot of these kids are the first members of their
Speaker 1: family to go to college, but they decide that continuing
Speaker 1: the freedom rides, not letting non violence and in violence
Speaker 1: like this, is more important. So this time, though, the
Speaker 1: makeup of the riders is a little different from the
Speaker 1: first ride, which was all staged by the group Core.
Speaker 1: It's still a mix of black and white men and women,
Speaker 1: and they're taking Greyhound and Trailways busses just like before,
Speaker 1: but they're all quite young this time. There were middle
Speaker 1: aged folks retired people last time. Most of them now though,
Speaker 1: are nineteen twenty. And there are also a lot more
Speaker 1: Southerners in the group, so kids from Atlanta and Nashville,
Speaker 1: of course, Charleston, Tampa, in addition to kids from other
Speaker 1: parts of the country New York, Oklahoma, Illinois. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a more diverse group in that sense. A
Speaker 1: strange thing happens when they get to Birmingham, though. When
Speaker 1: the first bus arrives Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor,
Speaker 1: who we mentioned in the last podcast, he lets the
Speaker 1: regular passengers off, covers the window with paper and then
Speaker 1: holds the remaining people on board, and finally, after they
Speaker 1: sweat it out in the may heat for a while,
Speaker 1: they're let off and then they proceed to the White
Speaker 1: waiting area and they're arrested that night. They're released from
Speaker 1: jail and put into cars, which is very ominous, but
Speaker 1: they drive right to the state line of Alabama and
Speaker 1: Tennessee and they're told by Connor to get out and
Speaker 1: make their way back to Nashville. From there, Tennessee State
Speaker 1: University student Katherine Burke's Brooks tells Connor that we'll see
Speaker 1: you back in Birmingham by high noon, So they're not
Speaker 1: about to be put down, no, And and this is
Speaker 1: still a scary situation though, that they've just been dropped
Speaker 1: off the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: They don't know if maybe there's some vigilante group the
Speaker 1: Clan waiting for them on the other side of the border,
Speaker 1: bullet Bull Connor is just handing them off, or what
Speaker 1: they're gonna do. So they hide. They find shelter with
Speaker 1: an older couple and by the next day nash has
Speaker 1: arranged from Afar a ride for them to get back
Speaker 1: to Birmingham, and I don't think they make it by noon,
Speaker 1: but they do make it back the next day. But
Speaker 1: by the time they're back in Birmingham, the Nashville Riders
Speaker 1: meet the second wave of their group. They are just
Speaker 1: like last time, different buses traveling into Alabama, but there's
Speaker 1: a problem. Besides Bull Connor in the threatening crowd, the
Speaker 1: bus drivers won't drive, so the riders are stuck there again.
Speaker 1: They're stuck in Birmingham, and we mentioned this in the
Speaker 1: last episode, individual bus drivers refusing to drive because they
Speaker 1: were afraid they would get their bus set on fire
Speaker 1: or be beaten or something. But in this case, the
Speaker 1: entire union refusing to drive, so there's really no way
Speaker 1: out of town again. So for the moment, it's looking
Speaker 1: kind of hopeless, but the Kennedy administration finally pressures Alabama's
Speaker 1: Governor John Patterson to promise protection or else face having
Speaker 1: the National Guard called in, and so Patterson agrees to
Speaker 1: provide state protection as the writers continue their trip to Montgomery, Alabama. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we mentioned this American Heritage documentary in the last episode,
Speaker 1: based on Raymond Arseno's book, and it really contained some
Speaker 1: great interviews with former freedom writers. But it's worth watching,
Speaker 1: I think, just to see Katherine Burke's Brooks expression as
Speaker 1: she recalls feeling relaxed enough to doze on the bush.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an expression like what was I thinking,
Speaker 1: mixed with total disappointment, a little sarcasm thrown in there.
Speaker 1: It's it's a you should watch it just to see that.
Speaker 1: But that feeling, that total relaxation, able to fall asleep
Speaker 1: on the bus feeling, obviously doesn't last very long because
Speaker 1: in Montgomery the state protection drops off, and they're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: the city police will pick up protection, but nobody ever comes.
Speaker 1: So here the bus is just rolling into Montgomery with
Speaker 1: no one around them. Yeah, and John Seagan Thaler, Robert
Speaker 1: Kennedy's assistant, the man who had been negotiating with the
Speaker 1: governor about providing state protection. He remembered thinking, quote, I
Speaker 1: knew suddenly betrayal, disaster, I hope not death. So he's
Speaker 1: scared too. At this point, a mob of more than
Speaker 1: two hundred weights at the Greyhound station for them. The
Speaker 1: first target this time is the reporters and a cameraman
Speaker 1: because the mob has seen how quickly these pictures get out,
Speaker 1: not just in the South, not just in the United States,
Speaker 1: but all over the world, and they don't want that
Speaker 1: to happen again. So for a sense of what this
Speaker 1: would have been like for the reporters, Time reporter Calvin Trillin,
Speaker 1: who took part in the rise as a journalist, recently
Speaker 1: wrote in The New Yorker that he'd tell his friend,
Speaker 1: a life photographer, quote, when we get in one of
Speaker 1: the situations, At best, I don't know you. At worst,
Speaker 1: I'm one of the people chasing you. Of course, the
Speaker 1: writers were also very severely beaten. As a white writer,
Speaker 1: Jim's Work was quickly beaten, unconscious and kicked in the
Speaker 1: face before going down. Though he remembered seeing men armed
Speaker 1: with baseball bats, chains, hammers, and this is crazy, even
Speaker 1: one guy with a pitchfork, so imagine that coming towards you.
Speaker 1: Berks Brooks remembers women shouting with babies in their arms.
Speaker 1: It was a spectacle. In addition to this really violent scene,
Speaker 1: and John Lewis, who had been part of the original
Speaker 1: core ride and had been actually attacked in South Carolina,
Speaker 1: was hit in the head with a wooden crate, and
Speaker 1: William Barbie had somebody try to drive a steel rod
Speaker 1: through his ear, and even Sign Dollar, who was the
Speaker 1: direct representative to the president, was hit with a pipe
Speaker 1: trying to help one of the female Freedom writers and
Speaker 1: he was knocked unconscious. So finally the police arrived they
Speaker 1: broke up the crowd with tear gas. So the next
Speaker 1: day May One sort of marks at turning point for
Speaker 1: the freedom rides. The riders and fIF undred supporters filled
Speaker 1: the First Baptist Church in Montgomery for a meeting, and
Speaker 1: by this point Martin Luther King and the larger movement
Speaker 1: really had to get involved in stand behind the riders,
Speaker 1: even though, as we mentioned before, many were ambivalent about
Speaker 1: the ride initially or even thought it would come out
Speaker 1: hurting the movement, But after the violence that had had happened,
Speaker 1: they had to all stand together and and support the ride,
Speaker 1: And so Martin Luther King actually comes down to Montgomery
Speaker 1: to meet up with everyone here at the church. Outside
Speaker 1: the church, though, a mom of three thousand gathers and
Speaker 1: they're breaking windows, threatening to burn down the church. The
Speaker 1: marshals that are set into control the crowd are just
Speaker 1: random federal workers. They dispersed tear gas with the wind
Speaker 1: blowing towards them and end up having to run away.
Speaker 1: They just have little patches on their sleeves, not even uniforms.
Speaker 1: So after that there's this night of phone calls. Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King is on the phone with Robert Kennedy trying
Speaker 1: to get him to do something. Robert Kennedy is on
Speaker 1: the phone with Paterson, trying to get him to act.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King even even gathers up a group of
Speaker 1: committed nonviolent volunteers to leave the church and dissuade a
Speaker 1: group of black cab drivers from using violence against the mom.
Speaker 1: So they're still trying to stick to their principle of
Speaker 1: non violence here. It's the best way for them to
Speaker 1: hopefully get out of this situation too. So finally the
Speaker 1: governor puts the city under martial law, and people in
Speaker 1: the church are free, you know, the crowd has broken up.
Speaker 1: They're free to go, and the Freedom Riders are also
Speaker 1: free to continue under the protection this time of the
Speaker 1: Alabama National Guard. So they hit the road heading towards Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and at the border, the Mississippi National Guard takes over
Speaker 1: with commands to take the bus right on through to Jackson,
Speaker 1: no stops, no trouble, and it kind of seems like
Speaker 1: they're out of the frying pan into the fire here.
Speaker 1: Because Mississippi was considered the most dangerous southern in state.
Speaker 1: You can hear them talking about how as bad as
Speaker 1: Alabama had had been for them, Mississippi seemed like there
Speaker 1: might be worth the worst things waiting, and there were
Speaker 1: scary signs right across the border. There were signs that
Speaker 1: said things like quote prepared to meet Thy God. So
Speaker 1: it looked like it was going to be as bad
Speaker 1: as they thought it was going to be. But response
Speaker 1: that they get there is quite different from Alabama's messy
Speaker 1: mob violence. According to Trillan, the former Time reporter, Mississippi's
Speaker 1: Citizens Council and State Sovereignty Commission wanted to avoid national
Speaker 1: news scandals and presidential interference too, and the president an
Speaker 1: attorney general wanted to avoid the violence and beatings on
Speaker 1: the national news, so they made this compromise. Instead of
Speaker 1: mob violence, there would be an organized, rapid police response.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean. This basically means that the
Speaker 1: first writers from trail Ways disembarked the bus, went to
Speaker 1: the Whites waiting room and were asked to leave politely,
Speaker 1: and after they refused, they were arrest stood, and this
Speaker 1: happened again with the greyhound bus. The charges against them
Speaker 1: are things like a breach of peace. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: this very orderly, non violent, uh, comparatively calm. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: even disturbingly common. I don't know, after what they've gone through.
Speaker 1: But from there they'd be quickly processed and sent through court,
Speaker 1: put into the city jail, and then eventually shipped off
Speaker 1: not just to any old prison, but to the state
Speaker 1: penitentiary Parchment State Prison Farm, which was one of the
Speaker 1: most notorious prisons in the country. Just a little side note,
Speaker 1: even if you don't know about Parchment, you've probably heard
Speaker 1: about it if you've listened really carefully to blues or
Speaker 1: folk recordings, because in the nineteen thirties Allen Lomax recorded
Speaker 1: singers and bluesmen for the Library of Congress, singing really
Speaker 1: sad songs about how hard life was in Parchment. But
Speaker 1: the freedom writers didn't have the expected reaction that all
Speaker 1: the author reads in Mississippi thought they would have. They
Speaker 1: thought that they would just post bail, get out and
Speaker 1: not got back. Yeah, get out of town. But instead
Speaker 1: they take up the slogan jail no bail and resolved
Speaker 1: to fill up the prison and clog up their system.
Speaker 1: So buslos of them just keep coming through that summer,
Speaker 1: even though On May Robert Kennedy petitioned the Interstate Commerce
Speaker 1: Commission to prohibit segregation and interstate bus travel and pleaded
Speaker 1: with the writers to take a cooling off period while
Speaker 1: the request was processed. So he was basically like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're trying to put this through. Can you guys please
Speaker 1: stop for a little while. He was encouraging them to
Speaker 1: shift their attention to voter registration, you know, something something
Speaker 1: to work on. Please let this go. But they were
Speaker 1: completely unwilling to do that. They rejected the cooling off period,
Speaker 1: and instead the rides intensified. Ultimately, three hundred of the
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty six Freedom Writers ended up at
Speaker 1: Parchment Prison, and finally, by September the anniversary, we are
Speaker 1: commemorating here the I c C issue of the order
Speaker 1: that all segregated signs would come down at interstate bus
Speaker 1: and train terminals. Um and we've got to talk about
Speaker 1: the the effect of the rides and what people thought
Speaker 1: at the time, since they were kind of unpopular at
Speaker 1: the beginning, even within the movement. According to the New
Speaker 1: Yorker article we mentioned earlier, in nineteen sixty one Gallop
Speaker 1: poll showed that only one in four Americans approved of
Speaker 1: the rides, but after the victory, it was clear that
Speaker 1: they had accomplished something. They had been effective. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they saw that nonviolent activism could really work. According to
Speaker 1: a Smithsonian article by Marion Smith Holmes the New York Times,
Speaker 1: for example, which was formerly critical of the rides, they
Speaker 1: admitted that the Freedom Writers quotes started the chain of
Speaker 1: events which resulted in the new I c. C Order.
Speaker 1: It also had the effect of empowering young student leaders
Speaker 1: in the movement and of forcing ties between the Kennedy
Speaker 1: administration and civil rights leaders. Exactly those late nite phone
Speaker 1: calls we were talking about, where Martin Luther king Is
Speaker 1: is calling up the Kennedy's and all of these nineteen
Speaker 1: year old twenty year olds who decide to leave school
Speaker 1: during their exams and go out and do this. But
Speaker 1: in addition to Raymond Arsenow's book and that American Experience
Speaker 1: documentary that is inspired by it, there is just so
Speaker 1: much on this story. It's a really it's a really
Speaker 1: great one. If you want to do some research yourself
Speaker 1: and get even deeper into it. Their countless interviews and
Speaker 1: articles by former writers and politicians and journalists and there's
Speaker 1: a great photographic record too, and I wanted to just
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit more because I think
Speaker 1: it's so interesting. So there aren't just images of the
Speaker 1: violent beatings and the burning buses and the segregated waiting rooms,
Speaker 1: those images that really went across international newspaper headlines. There
Speaker 1: are also kind of more personal images too. So in
Speaker 1: two thousand two, the Mississippi the State Sovereignty Commission was
Speaker 1: forced to open its archives after this lengthy, like multi
Speaker 1: decade long lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union, And
Speaker 1: after that, three hundred mug shots of the Freedom Writers
Speaker 1: became available for the first time, and an editor named
Speaker 1: Eric Etheridge decided to He was really moved by all
Speaker 1: of these photos of these people who have been arrested
Speaker 1: and kind of have these defiant looks. Some of them
Speaker 1: are almost smiling, some of them have clearly been roughed up.
Speaker 1: But he decided to seek out the Freedom Writers that
Speaker 1: were photographed and re photographed them, since they would, of
Speaker 1: course all be mature adults by that point, and he
Speaker 1: just cold called them. He told Smithsonian that his quote
Speaker 1: best ice breaker was I have your mug shot from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one have you ever seen it. It's a
Speaker 1: very cool story. He got a lot of photos, made
Speaker 1: a book out of it, and it is really interesting
Speaker 1: too to see what these people went on to do
Speaker 1: with the rest of their lives after after doing something
Speaker 1: like this, maybe when they're only nineteen years old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I have to imagine that it was thrilling
Speaker 1: to call them and maybe meet them. I mean, these people,
Speaker 1: no matter what you think about their strategy, how they
Speaker 1: went about what they did, they were uniquely brave people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and to find out how many of them were still
Speaker 1: involved in activism or had continued work that seemed really
Speaker 1: fitting for somebody who was a former freedom writer, somebody
Speaker 1: who would go out and and do this. So, while
Speaker 1: we are done talking about the freedom rides in the
Speaker 1: American South, were not quite done with this topic because
Speaker 1: people in Australia were motivated also in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: to stage their own freedom rides, and that's going to
Speaker 1: get its whole owned episode next time we talk. So
Speaker 1: stay tuned. If you want to learn a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the freedom rides, you can also suggest other
Speaker 1: civil rights topics, or maybe you're getting to be for Australia,
Speaker 1: you can send other Australian topics to us by emailing
Speaker 1: us at History podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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Speaker 1: bit more about some of the topics discussed today, we
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