Freedom Rides

Freedom Rides by: Anahi Ponce Garcia

What is it?

Freedom rides were most likely civil right activist who challenged racial laws in the American South in the 1960s, originally by refusing to abide by the laws designating that seating in buses be segregated by race.

What lead to this event?

”On May 4, 1961, a group of 13 African-American and white civil rights activists launched the Freedom Rides, a series of bus trips through the American South to protest segregation in interstate bus terminals. The Freedom Riders, who were recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a U.S. civil rights group, departed from Washington, D.C., and attempted to integrate facilities at bus terminals along the way into the Deep South. African-American Freedom Riders tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters, and vice versa. The group encountered tremendous violence from white protestors along the route, but also drew international attention to their cause.”

When and where did this happen?

On May 4th 1961 in Washington

As you can see on the signs they were specifically made for colored people. There only goal was not to keep those types of signs and restrictions on everything but to take those down to make everything equal for everyone.

Separate facilities for whites and blacks were the norm in the South, like at this Durham, North Carolina, bus station in 1940.

What was the goal?

Trying to make equal rights for the blacks so that they would have the same privileges as whites would have and so everything could

How did they pass the obstacles

By sticking together and never letting it pass by. All of them stuck together and never let one another down and kept everything going even if it hurt them to do so the consequences were nothing to them they didn't care they just wanted for everything to be equal.

This picture shows how a bus was attacked and burned down

Who was affected?

Here is a black man being abused by white people but no one is helping because they are blacks.

The black people and also anyone who supported the blacks in anything that they did didn't matter if they were also white if you accepted the blacks and helped and encouraged the protest or anything else that they did then you would get the same type of respect the blacks got.

Who was involved?

There was many people who were involved but not including the blacks and whites that were included. Some were called the Civil Rights Activist but also Martin Luther King was involved with others as well but none of them ever let the protest go down they always encouraged them and never saw down upon them.

Black man sitting with a White man is rare but they all had to get used to it.

Impacts on todays life

This impacted today's life because now there is still race roles that people don’t accept but now even if they don’t like they can’t do anything about it because everything is free and liberal and they can just say whatever but they can’t do anything at all because everything that happened when racism still existed even if it still exists right now it's not as bad as how people got treated back then. Everything now is more calm but back then it was so much chaos.

How does it connect with an event today?

The election caused so many riots and protest and racism everything that happens now the exact same as if it was being in the same situation as freedom rides all over again because the new president that got elected was Donald Trump and he made people be racist and made people have many protest on rights and everything just became a big riot of chaos.