In 1947, 16 men—eight black and eight white—boarded a bus to test compliance with a recent Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation on interstate bus travel.
John Patterson, Alabama's governor from 1958 to 1963, discusses his decision to refuse a phone call from President Kennedy when the Freedom Riders encountered mob violence in Birmingham.
After deciding to participate in the Freedom Rides in May 1961, Jim Zwerg called his parents for support only to be told that he was “killing his father.”
Former civil rights activists raised in the South recount how their commitment to nonviolence was sorely tested by the extreme hostility and mob violence they encountered.
The state of Mississippi's plan to bankrupt CORE backfired when, on August 14, 1961, all but nine of the Freedom Riders returned to Jackson for their arraignment.
