The violence did not produce the desired effect instead, the Freedom Rides multiplied. In Alabama, that journey exploded, with the bus set afire, riders beaten, and mobs abetted by the local police. They started with an experiment: thirteen people traveling by bus from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, May 4–17. In 1961, CORE, now led by James Farmer, decided to try again. Board of Education (1954), the Montgomery bus boycott (1956), the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in (1960), and many similar events.

Rustin and company took a bus journey through the Upper South, disobeying Jim Crow laws and customs. The Freedom Rides had their origin in the Journey of Reconciliation led by CORE and Bayard Rustin in 1947.

They were Freedom Riders, part of the project led by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to take nonviolent action against racial segregation in the South. After staying in jail overnight, they were tried, convicted, fined, and sentenced to four months in jail. All were white, but at the Jackson bus terminal they went straight to the waiting room marked “colored.” Police arrested them at the lunch counter inside on a charge of breach of peace. On June 11, 1961, six young Minnesotans took a Greyhound bus from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. The Rides grew to over fifty journeys and other actions, and attracted 436 Riders six of them were from Minnesota. Their goal was to end race segregation in interstate bus travel. The Freedom Rides of 1961 began with thirteen riders traveling on two buses through the South.

Freedom riders