It does not diminish the memory of Rosa Parks that a half-
dozen years after her refusal to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in December 1955, a black person still could not travel freely on buses throughout the South.
But neither the Montgomery bus boycott sparked by Parks nor events such as the school desegregation confrontations of the 1950s or the later lunch counter sit-ins had the impact of the Freedom Rides. Beginning in May 1961 and continuing through that year, they “sent shock waves through American society,” writes historian Raymond Arsenault, “evoking fears of widespread social disorder, racial polarization, and a messy constitutional crisis.”
Arsenault, a professor at the University of South Florida, chronicles the movement in “Freedom Riders” with what may seem daunting detail. But delving into Arsenault’s account, it is clear that his record of strategy sessions, church vigils, bloody assaults, mass arrests, political maneuverings and personal anguish captures the mood and the turmoil, the excitement and the confusion of the movement and the time.
Amid the onrushing events, several stand out and help to frame the tale.
When the first riders, in May 1961, were assaulted in Birmingham, their Greyhound bus was torched and they were blocked from continuing.
Black students and activists in Nashville immediately headed by bus for Birmingham. They, too, were assaulted and arrested, but their action, Arsenault writes, transformed “a limited project into a full-
fledged movement.” The deepening crisis roiled the Kennedy administration, which saw civil rights as “an embarrassing luxury” as it fought the Cold War. But after weeks of failed efforts to resolve the crisis through negotiations with Southern leaders, it sought, and obtained a ruling from the Interstate Commerce Commission barring segregated transportation facilities.
Once the ICC ruled, Arsenault writes, movement leaders planned a new wave of rides to test its enforcement. The first came in Albany, Ga., when nine black students walked into the bus station and were allowed to buy tickets.
After sitting briefly in the waiting room, they were asked to leave, but, writes Arsenault, “by standing up for their constitutional rights, however briefly, they had broken the spell of unchallenged dominance.” In all, there were 62 rides involving 434 people.
Arsenault notes that, contrary to the notion that the typical rider was a white activist from the North – the derided outside agitator – 38 percent were black activists from the South. Arsenault says the Freedom Rides “compounded and accelerated the changes” that had been initiated by earlier civil rights thrusts.
