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 Dowdy and I'm doubling and chokoate boarding. And
Speaker 1: you could be forgiven for thinking it's nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: again with all of the big civil rights anniversaries that
Speaker 1: have been in the news this year, fiftieth anniversaries, that's
Speaker 1: so true, um, most notably the fiftieth anniversary of the
Speaker 1: Freedom Rides this past May, when more than four hundred
Speaker 1: people of all ages, male, female, black, white, different religions
Speaker 1: from all over the country decided to challenge the racial
Speaker 1: segregation of interstate buses. Yeah, and the Freedom Rides have
Speaker 1: been really well covered this year. There have been articles,
Speaker 1: news stories, two reunions of riders, one in Jackson, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: one in Chicago. I think that one was hosted by
Speaker 1: Oprah herself. There was a fantastic American experience Dock and
Speaker 1: Entery based on the book on the Freedom Writers by
Speaker 1: Raymond Arsenal. There have been op eds and reflections from
Speaker 1: the writers and national papers. But we are not ones
Speaker 1: to let the May anniversary of the Freedom Ride stop
Speaker 1: us from doing a podcast on them in September, because
Speaker 1: September is also a really important date for the Freedom Rides.
Speaker 1: It's when change actually happened, when the Interstate Commerce Commission
Speaker 1: finally ruled that the sign segregating whites and blacks at
Speaker 1: bus and train facilities had to come down and actually
Speaker 1: backed up that ruling with a really hefty fine for offenders.
Speaker 1: So that ruling validated the Riders in their tactics, and
Speaker 1: that's worth pointing out before we get into this two
Speaker 1: part episode on the Freedom Rides, and before we get
Speaker 1: into how the ride started, because even though today the
Speaker 1: riders are clearly celebrated as civil rights heroes, at the time,
Speaker 1: what they were doing was extremely troversial, even within the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement itself. So they didn't know what they
Speaker 1: were what they were setting out to do. They just
Speaker 1: knew they had to do it. Yeah, But before we
Speaker 1: even get to the rides themselves, our story really starts
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four with a woman named Irene Morgan.
Speaker 1: Now everyone knows Rosa Parks Right and her refusal to
Speaker 1: give up her bus seat in the nineteen fifties, but
Speaker 1: a decade earlier, Morgan refused to give up her seat
Speaker 1: on a Greyhound traveling through Virginia, and Morgan, who made
Speaker 1: World War Two bomber planes for a plant for a living,
Speaker 1: was coming home to Baltimore after visiting her mother. So
Speaker 1: after refusing to move, she kicked the sheriff's deputy who
Speaker 1: tried to take her off the bus. And later she said, quote,
Speaker 1: I started to bite him, but he looked dirty, so
Speaker 1: I couldn't bite him. So all I could do was
Speaker 1: claw and tear his clothes. Yeah, and that and other
Speaker 1: great quotes are from her New York Times obituary. But
Speaker 1: Morgan was arrested and went ahead paid that one hundred
Speaker 1: dollar fine for resisting arrest, but she refused to pay
Speaker 1: a the ten dollar fine for violating a Virginia law
Speaker 1: about segregated seating, So it was off to court she went,
Speaker 1: and eventually the n double a c p. Took up
Speaker 1: her case and appealed to the Supreme Court, and in
Speaker 1: ninety the court actually ruled in her favor in Morgan
Speaker 1: Versus Virginia, and um just the gist of the ruling here.
Speaker 1: Seating arrangements for the different races in interstate motor travel
Speaker 1: require a single uniform rule to promote and protect national travel.
Speaker 1: Sounds simple enough. Basically, you can't make African Americans sit
Speaker 1: in the back of the bus and white people sit
Speaker 1: in the front, and nobody should be giving up their
Speaker 1: seat unless just to an old person or something like that.
Speaker 1: So it sounds simple, but it wasn't because Southern states
Speaker 1: continued to flaunt the law with segregated seating, segregated waiting rooms, restrooms,
Speaker 1: water fountains. So eventually somebody decided that they needed to
Speaker 1: do something and actually test out this new law, and
Speaker 1: that was a group organized by the Congress of Racial
Speaker 1: Equality or CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. They decided
Speaker 1: to test the new ruling by staging the Journey of
Speaker 1: Reconciliation through the Upper South. The Upper South. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's important here, especially when we get into the later
Speaker 1: Freedom Rides where they head into Alabama in Mississippi and
Speaker 1: and things get a lot different. Back in nine seven,
Speaker 1: they knew that wasn't an option, right, So basically this
Speaker 1: is how it worked. Eight black men and eight white
Speaker 1: men would ride on interstate buses and trains and see
Speaker 1: if Morgan versus Virginia was a law in action or
Speaker 1: in name only. So there was a catch though it
Speaker 1: would be non violent. Even if they were faced with
Speaker 1: arrests or beatings, the writers would not react. So while
Speaker 1: Morgan had been the inspiration for this, she was obviously
Speaker 1: not their non violent role model, with her attempted bites
Speaker 1: and all of that. I think that makes Morgan such
Speaker 1: an interesting character in this whole thing, too, which such
Speaker 1: a famous non violent movement, that she is the inspiration
Speaker 1: for it. But for that non violent inspiration, leaders instead
Speaker 1: turned to Gandhi and he actually was the inspiration for
Speaker 1: Courts Founding back in nineteen two. But the Journey of Reconciliation,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's gonna make waves. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a big deal, but it really didn't have that much
Speaker 1: of an impact. The writers did meet with violence, three
Speaker 1: of them spent a month on a North Carolina chain
Speaker 1: gang after violating segregation rules in Chapel Hill, but the
Speaker 1: story wasn't really picked up by national media, and folks
Speaker 1: just weren't that interested. So Arsenal writes that the ride
Speaker 1: ultimately quote brought about little change and was soon forgotten
Speaker 1: by all but a handful of non violent activists. So
Speaker 1: a decade goes by, and then in nineteen sixties, some
Speaker 1: important things start to happen to inspire a new wave
Speaker 1: of freedom rides. One of those things is that JFK
Speaker 1: is elected president. Another is that Nashville sit ins and
Speaker 1: segregation at city lunch counters there. And also the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court issues another decision related to interstate travel. This time
Speaker 1: it's a point in versus Virginia, which made any racial
Speaker 1: segregation illegal in interstate commerce. And that's anything. So not
Speaker 1: only should a black person be able to take any
Speaker 1: seat on the bus, he should also be able to
Speaker 1: use any waiting room, restroom, coffee counter, and so on.
Speaker 1: All Right, so there's a new Supreme Court decision and
Speaker 1: this momentum going from the Nashville sit ins, and Core
Speaker 1: and its director James Farmer decide, let's test this new
Speaker 1: ruling boy in versus Virginia. So this time, not only
Speaker 1: would the new writers keep that direct action movement of
Speaker 1: the Siddens going, they would help promote CORE too on
Speaker 1: this national scale, since it was, after all, less well
Speaker 1: known than the N double A c P or SNIC
Speaker 1: or the SCLC. And that's something, as we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the beginning, that this was kind of controversial within the
Speaker 1: movement that was something that added to the ambivalence or
Speaker 1: sometimes outright hostility directed at the initial ride by much
Speaker 1: of the movement um. But we've got to give you
Speaker 1: a sense of how these initial core riders were picked,
Speaker 1: because they weren't just willy nilly passengers on the bus.
Speaker 1: They all had to be trained, they all had to
Speaker 1: come with recommendations even and again they all kind of
Speaker 1: came from different sort of facets of life. One member,
Speaker 1: James Peck, was from Manhattan and he had participated in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties Journey of Reconciliation, so he had some
Speaker 1: experience with this. The others were handpicked to maintain their
Speaker 1: non violent directive. So in addition to having to get recommendations,
Speaker 1: as Sarah said, the youngest of them also had to
Speaker 1: get parental permission. They also underwent careful training to resist
Speaker 1: that violent impulse, but really they only anticipated refusal of
Speaker 1: service and possibly maybe arrest. You can see videos though,
Speaker 1: of this training, and it's pretty fascinating to watch and
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable because you know, it is a simulated situation
Speaker 1: and these people actually all know each other. Well, there's
Speaker 1: the man playing the antagonizer, the woman playing the waitress,
Speaker 1: and it's it's strange to see. But as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: they were from all different walks of life. They were
Speaker 1: all ages, all professions, students, retirees, editors, was a folk singer,
Speaker 1: and most were from the North or the Midwest, with
Speaker 1: a few southern exceptions, including probably the most famous writer,
Speaker 1: John Lewis, who was from Alabama. UM. But that's something
Speaker 1: also to consider when we were mentioning earlier about the
Speaker 1: hostility or ambivalence within the movement, that these people were
Speaker 1: largely Northerners, were largely Midwesterners, and they were coming into
Speaker 1: the South to to test these segregated Jim Crow rules.
Speaker 1: So the first riders left May fourth, nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: They were departing from Washington, d C. And ultimately the
Speaker 1: final destination was going to be New Orleans, which it's
Speaker 1: above thride. That was going to take a while, and
Speaker 1: they didn't really know what they would encounter along the way.
Speaker 1: But the bus started out winding its way through Virginia
Speaker 1: and North Carolina. There were thirteen riders. They were taking
Speaker 1: Greyhound and Trailways buses, so two different lines, just testing
Speaker 1: out the whole range of the system. And at first
Speaker 1: they really saw what they expected stations would sort of
Speaker 1: reluctantly break from their segregationist policies just while the riders
Speaker 1: were there, So just go ahead and let them sit
Speaker 1: in the black sitting room or the white sitting room,
Speaker 1: whatever race they weren't, let them use the wrong restroom,
Speaker 1: whatever they were doing, and then just um let them be,
Speaker 1: Let them get on their bus and move on through town,
Speaker 1: get out of their hair, and presumably return to business
Speaker 1: as usual, which was full on segregation. But by Charlotte,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, that wasn't what was happening anymore. People weren't
Speaker 1: just letting it slide until they were gone. Troubles arted.
Speaker 1: There were arrests and beatings in rock Hill, South Carolina,
Speaker 1: and by May thirteenth, the writers finally made it to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: where they had this little get together sort of pause
Speaker 1: in the ride planned with Dr Martin Luther King. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were really hoping that when they got there
Speaker 1: he would join in become a freedom writer with them,
Speaker 1: but instead he took a very different attitude. He warned them,
Speaker 1: He told them that he had heard bad news coming
Speaker 1: out of Alabama and they should seriously reconsider continuing on
Speaker 1: and even questioning the wisdom of what they were doing
Speaker 1: in the first place, whether this was really helping the movement.
Speaker 1: So this is pretty discouraging news to hear it their
Speaker 1: Atlanta reception, and to make matters worse, James Farmer, the
Speaker 1: leader of Core, gets word that his father has died
Speaker 1: and has to pull out for a few days to
Speaker 1: go home. Still though, May fourteen, Mother's Day, the leaderless
Speaker 1: writer set off from Atlanta to Brmingham, Alabama, on Greyhound
Speaker 1: and Trailways buses that are leaving one hour apart. And
Speaker 1: sure enough, shortly after crossing the Alabama state line, one
Speaker 1: of the buses runs into trouble. The Greyhound hits a
Speaker 1: crowd of about two hundred men in Anniston. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's all been planned. A klansman lies down in front
Speaker 1: of the bus so that the other members of the
Speaker 1: mob can slash the tires, and the bus maneuvers out
Speaker 1: of town, but it's followed and hounded by a car.
Speaker 1: Then finally the tires go flat. The driver gets out,
Speaker 1: checks them and walks away, just leaves the people on
Speaker 1: the bus. And there's this really harrowing scene in the
Speaker 1: documentary where passenger may Francis Moultrie. Here someone shouting where
Speaker 1: is the gas? Where is the gas? Yeah, I'd really
Speaker 1: recommend to that documentary for seeing some of these freedom
Speaker 1: writers reflect on it and and say what they heard
Speaker 1: and what they experienced. But the mob attacks the bus
Speaker 1: then and throws a firebomb in through the back window
Speaker 1: and then block the door to prevent the people from
Speaker 1: getting off. And also keep in mind there aren't just
Speaker 1: freedom writers on this bus. They're regular passengers to who
Speaker 1: are just trying to get to Birmingham or wherever and
Speaker 1: are caught up in this. Two things ultimately saved the
Speaker 1: riders and those unaffiliated bus passengers. The fuel tank explodes,
Speaker 1: which makes the mob back away from the bus, and
Speaker 1: then highway patrolman finally arrived, but not until the coughing,
Speaker 1: choking passengers who have just escaped from the bus are
Speaker 1: beaten by the crowd. There's one catch though with this,
Speaker 1: With this violent scene, photographs are taken and it becomes
Speaker 1: a major news story and they go worldwide, not just
Speaker 1: a national news story, becomes worldwide news something terrible happening
Speaker 1: in the United States. But meanwhile, that second bus is
Speaker 1: still chugging on toward Birmingham. Yeah where, Little did they
Speaker 1: know the city's Commissioner of Public Safety, Bowl Connor, has
Speaker 1: made a deal with the KKK. The deal is that
Speaker 1: when the bus comes to town, the clan will get
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes without police interference to do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: People on the bus, no arrests, no trouble at all.
Speaker 1: And there's another catch to this too. The FBI had
Speaker 1: an informant and the clan, and he knew the plan
Speaker 1: to attack the bus. Jed Grew Hoover didn't report the
Speaker 1: mob's plans to Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The informant even
Speaker 1: participated when the mob attacked and beat the writers as
Speaker 1: they came into the station. And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that a little more in the part two of
Speaker 1: this episode, and and some of the legal battles that ensued.
Speaker 1: But just like an Aniston, photographers get pictures of this
Speaker 1: mob attacking the passengers coming from Atlanta, and this news
Speaker 1: makes international headlines too. It's very disturbing to people, and
Speaker 1: it's something that UM, the Federal administer ration, really can't ignore.
Speaker 1: So Jim Peck, who has been unofficially in charge since
Speaker 1: James Farmer left, makes the call to continue the ride
Speaker 1: from the hospital. He has been severely beaten. And it's
Speaker 1: worth noting here too that a lot of the white
Speaker 1: riders would be targeted initially sort of as betrayers to
Speaker 1: their race by the mobs. So Jim Peck was really
Speaker 1: really bad off. Pictures of him are disturbing to see,
Speaker 1: but he said that they felt, quote, they must not
Speaker 1: surrender to violence. So let's not stop here. There's a
Speaker 1: problem though, Like, I mean, that's a very noble, brave
Speaker 1: thing to do to try to continue the ride, but
Speaker 1: there's a problem. None of the drivers out of Birmingham
Speaker 1: are willing to take them. Nobody wants to risk it.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to risk being on a firebomb bus or
Speaker 1: attacked by a mob and and dragged down with the
Speaker 1: rest of them. Yeah, I mean, you can hardly blame them.
Speaker 1: But they finally decide that the ride has to end.
Speaker 1: They'll fly to New Orleans instead, but even that proves
Speaker 1: to be quite difficult. The mob follows them, a bomb
Speaker 1: threat is called in on their plane, and it seems
Speaker 1: that they're stuck in Alabama and definitely can't get out
Speaker 1: of the Birmingham airport. So, like we said, by this
Speaker 1: point that Kennedy's really have to get involved with this
Speaker 1: story all over the world's papers, and the poor beaten
Speaker 1: freedom riders stuck in the airport. They can't let things
Speaker 1: get anywhere. So John Seigenthaler, who was the assistant to
Speaker 1: Attorney General Robert Kennedy, arranges the rider's flight and escorts
Speaker 1: them to New Orleans. They're they're met by state police
Speaker 1: at the plane who protect them but also curse them
Speaker 1: as they walk to the terminal, and that ends the ride.
Speaker 1: It's over. The Kennedy think that hopefully it's all over,
Speaker 1: um they can get back to international pursuits, but it's
Speaker 1: not because there is another wave setting out from Nashville.
Speaker 1: The students in the Nashville Student Movement realized that they
Speaker 1: could let Cores attempt and there end in violence. And
Speaker 1: the leader of that movement, Diane Nash, who was a
Speaker 1: student in the Nashville movement, told of Birmingham reverend quote,
Speaker 1: if they stop us with violence, the movement is dead.
Speaker 1: So there a little cliffhanger for this episode. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the next episode, we're gonna talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that Nashville movement as it picks up the baton
Speaker 1: and as riots continue in Alabama and Mississippi plays hardball
Speaker 1: with its state penitentiary, So just to give you a
Speaker 1: little teaser there, but we're done with us for today.
Speaker 1: If you have any ideas to send us for podcasts
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Speaker 1: where History Podcast at how stuff works dot com or
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Speaker 1: at Myston History. And we also have an article about
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement. I bet we're going to be
Speaker 1: recommending this one quite a bit in the next few
Speaker 1: episodes on the freedom rights. But it is called how
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Movement Worked, and even find it by
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