Photographs of the burning Greyhound bus and the bloodied riders appeared on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country and around the world the next day, drawing international attention to the Freedom Riders’ cause and the state of race relations in the United States.įollowing the widespread violence, CORE officials could not find a bus driver who would agree to transport the integrated group, and they decided to abandon the Freedom Rides. Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor stated that, although he knew the Freedom Riders were arriving and violence awaited them, he posted no police protection at the station because it was Mother’s Day. The second bus, a Trailways vehicle, traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, and those riders were also beaten by an angry white mob, many of whom brandished metal pipes.

The Freedom Riders escaped the bus as it burst into flames, only to be brutally beaten by members of the surrounding mob. The mob followed the bus in automobiles, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. There, an angry mob of about 200 white people surrounded the bus, causing the driver to continue past the bus station. On May 14, 1961, the Greyhound bus was the first to arrive in Anniston, Alabama. Lewis, a Democrat, continued to represent Georgia's 5th Congressional District, which includes Atlanta, until his death in 2020.

House of Representatives in November 1986. The next day, the group reached Atlanta, Georgia, where some of the riders split off onto a Trailways bus.ĭid you know? John Lewis, one of the original group of 13 Freedom Riders, was elected to the U.S. John Lewis, an African American seminary student and member of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), white Freedom Rider and World War II veteran Albert Bigelow and another Black rider were viciously attacked as they attempted to enter a whites-only waiting area. The first violent incident occurred on May 12 in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina, drawing little public notice. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of the nation’s public schools was unconstitutional. Their plan was to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 17 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. The original group of 13 Freedom Riders-seven African Americans and six whites-left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus on May 4, 1961.

Freedom rider traffic sheet music