The Sidney Poitier Story

And we continue with our American Stories. Up next, a story of one of the most important, dangerous, and courageous protests during the Civil Rights Movement. We’re talking about the Freedom Rides of 1961. Here to tell the story is Kirk Higgins, the senior director of Content at the Bill of Rights Institute. And you can check out their great curriculum in American History on mybri.org. Let’s get into the story.

Take it away, Kirk. May fourth, 1961. A warm spring day in our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. Buses are scattered throughout downtown as school groups and tourists flowed in to see our nation’s monuments and memorials bearing the names of our most cherished leaders: Lincoln, Jefferson, and Washington. One bus had a very different destination in mind. It was carrying a group of thirteen Black and White Civil Rights activists of various ages and backgrounds, but all committed to the same cause, and all committed to non-violence. Their destination: New Orleans. They’d ride through seven different states on the way there: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and finally, Louisiana. Their vision was simple: to protest segregation, or more specifically, laws in states that made it illegal for Black people to ride as equals to White people on the same bus or train. Behind it all, Executive Director of the Congress of Racial Equality, James Farmer, took his seat with the others. They tried to smile, but it wasn’t easy. For all, the riders knew this ride could quite possibly be the last ride of their lives. The risk of violence was high, and law enforcement couldn’t, or in some cases, wouldn’t, guarantee their safety. John Lewis would later recall that while the seven Whites and six African Americans dined together at a Chinese restaurant the night before the ride, one had remarked that they should, quote, “eat well because it could be their last supper.” Farmer later recalled, quote, “we were told that the racists, the segregationists, would go to any extent to hold the line on segregation in interstate travel.” So when we began the ride, I think all of us were prepared for as much violence as could be thrown at us.

If you can never whip these budgets, if they don’t keep you in them, shephard, you’ve gotten to kick the White the Black.

I’ve draw a line in the DARF and passed declipment before the freedom turning, and I say, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”

The bus pulled out for the station. This wasn’t the first time something like this had been tried. In 1947, sixteen men — eight White and eight Black — planned to travel from D.C. to fifteen segregated Southern cities. Their goal was to test a recent Supreme Court decision, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, which ruled that Virginia’s law enforcing segregation on interstate buses, Greyhounds, and the like, was unconstitutional. Yet Southern states refused to follow the ruling. The men on the first Freedom Ride only made it as far as North Carolina before some of their ranks were arrested. Astonishing, considering that they had meticulously planned their travel to exclude the Deep South, where things were even worse. On May twentieth, two of the four arrested — Bayard Rustin and Igle Roadianko — found themselves in front of Judge Henry Whitfield, a hardline segregationist. Rustin, a Black man, would get thirty days on a chain gang. Roadianko, a White man, would get ninety, simply for sitting next to one another. Explaining the difference in his sentencing, Judge Whitfield stated that Rustin had been, quote, “this led by the White man Roadianko.” And, intentionally mispronouncing Roadienko’s last name as Rodensky, stated, “It’s about time that you Jews from New York learned that you can’t come down bringing your African Americans with you to upset the customs of the South.” Whitfield, of course, didn’t use the phrase African American, preferring to use a racial epithet instead. He further explained that he was giving the sentence to, quote, “teach him a lesson.” All this for doing something the Supreme Court deemed legal. But back to 1961, things were slightly different. A decade or so after the first Freedom Riders, the “colored people only” and “Whites only” signs had been removed from the interstate buses themselves in the wake of the Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia case, but they had not been removed in bus terminals and rest stops. The Freedom Riders encountered their first signs only a mere fifty miles south of Washington, above the restroom doors at a Greyhound stop in Fredericksburg. It was Danville, Virginia, near the border of North Carolina, where the riders would encounter their first real resistance—nothing physically violent, thankfully, just a degrading refusal of service. After talking to the manager of the rest stop, they’d get their refreshments and move on. But as the riders headed further south, the chance of violence only increased. Things would boil over in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Freedom Rider and future Congressman John Lewis was met by a mob of twenty people when he tried to enter the White waiting room at a rest stop, only after he had been severely beat at the police officer station there step in. He had watched the events unfold for quite some time before.

taking any action.

Forty-eight years later, one of the men who attacked him — a former Klansman who had hurled jackhandles at African Americans and attended crossburnings — personally apologized for his actions in Lewis’s office on Capitol Hill.

An unlikely reunion for these two men: Congressman John Lewis and Elwyn Wilson. They met, if you can call it that, forty-eight years ago, in…

very different times, in a blur of angry fists and proud protest. Lewis, then a Freedom Rider for Doctor King, arrived at the Rock Hill, South Carolina, bus depot May ninth, 1961, and was pummeled by Wilson, who for years has been working his way toward this moment.

I’m sorry for what happened down then. Well, that’s okay.

That’s all right.

It’s almost forty-eight years ago. “Yeah, so remember that day?” “Well, I never thought that this would happen.” It says something about…

the power of love, the power of grace, and the power of people to be able to say, “I’m sorry.”

I feel like I got saved out there.

One of his buddies, deeply religious, pose the question that would finally set his soul on a different course.

He said, “If you died right now, do you know where you would go?” I said, “To Hall.”

And then as Elwyn Wilson watched Barack Obama become president, something shifted in his heart.

Vote for him. But I’m glad he’s there, and I’ve prayed.

For one, and what now?

I want to love people, regards of what called.

And you’ve been listening to Kirk Higgins, the director of Content at the Bill of Rights Institute, telling the story of the Freedom Rides of 1961, and the destination was New Orleans. The starting place was Washington, D.C. There were some bad signs to start, fifty miles south of D.C., but they took the form they were manifested in: the form of a denial of services. As they headed further south — oh, South Carolina in particular — that’s when things turned violent. The late Congressman John Lewis was beaten badly simply trying to use the rest stop facilities. When we come back, more of the Freedom Rides of 1961, here on our American Stories. And we return to our American Stories and our story on the Freedom Rides of 1961. Telling the story is Kirk Higgins, the director of Content at the Bill of Rights Institute. Let’s return to the story. Take it away, Kirk.

The Freedom Riders continued onwards, and as they pulled into Atlanta on Sunday, May fourteenth, they decided to split up for the next leg of the trip. To Birmingham, Alabama. It turned out to be a fateful decision. When the first group reached a stop in Anniston, Alabama, an angry mob of some two hundred Whites surrounded their Greyhound bus, some of them armed with iron bars. They broke windows, dented the sides, and punctured the tires. Somehow the bus was able to drive off. It only made it six miles down the road before the tires went flat. The mob had followed them. Someone broke the back window and hurled a firebomb onto the bus. The bus was immediately engulfed in thick black smoke, and the Freedom Riders fell to the floor to breathe. Some managed to make it out of the windows; others tried to dash for the door, only to find it blocked from the outside. The mob was out for blood. The sound of a policeman’s gunshot up into the air caused the crowd to disperse. It was some miracle that all the riders managed to make it out of the bus alive, and even more astonishing that they weren’t killed once outside. This wouldn’t be the last round of violence those on the Freedom Ride encounter. The next stop was Birmingham, Alabama, the heart of the Deep South. The awfulis Eugene Connor, better known as Bull Connor, paced back and forth in his office in downtown Birmingham. Just days earlier, he had been re-elected in a landslide to his position as Commissioner in Public Safety, his sixth term in the position. He’d held it more or less since before World War II. His career in politics had started after a stint as a radio broadcaster for the Birmingham Barons baseball club. Years later, Willie Mays, who played for the Birmingham Black Barons in his youth, would remember that he, quote, “was a pretty good announcer, although I think he used to get too excited,” end quote. His career was also built on upholding the segregation that the Freedom Riders were challenging and the Supreme Court had illegal. Martin Luther King Junior called to him, quote, “a racist who prided himself on knowing how to handle the African American and keep him in his place.”

You can never quip the budgets if you don’t keep you in them separate. You’ve got to keep the White and the Black. Sept A Van Washington at Little Bobby Shops and his brother the Prince. They didn’t give anything, any word.

If we had some trouble here.

You’ve got to keep your White and Black separate. He was later known for using dogs and fire hoses against people, including children. There would be no police protection when the Freedom Riders pulled into Trailways bus terminal in Birmingham. Connor’s excuse was that it was Mother’s Day. In reality, he had granted a fifteen-minute grace period for an extra-judicial beating upon the riders by members of the KKK. As the riders exited the bus to sit at the all-White counter at the rest stop, mob beat them with fists, iron pipes, baseball bats, spike chains, and broken Coke bottles. James Peck, one of the few riders who had participated in the first Freedom Ride in 1947, took the courageous decision to combat them. He stated that, quote, “they would have to kill him before hurting the other riders,” end quote. Peck ended up with life-threatening wounds and required over fifty stitches, all for courageously defined e sagash. He would later tell a reporter that he endured the violence to, quote, “show that nonviolence can prevail over violence.” Again, the bus was firebombed. Despite the violence, the Freedom Riders fully intended to push onward with their journey. Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, had even arranged escort for them going forward into Montgomery, Alabama. But it wasn’t the riders’ resolve, but that of the Greyhound bus companies that would falter. The company refused to allow more of its buses to be destroyed or to put the lives of its drivers in danger. Frustrated, the riders made their way to the Birmingham Airport to fly to their destination of New Orleans. When they got on the plane, all the passengers would have to disembark due to a bomb threat. It looked as if the Freedom Rides were over, but a Black student named Diane Nash refused to back down. She feared that the Civil Rights Movement would face a large setback. Freedom Rides did not continue. Nash had already made her mark on the Civil Rights Movement, leading and participating in sit-ins that contributed to Nashville’s lunch counters being desegregated. Despite the project being suspended by CORE, she managed to organize another group to continue the trip. They wouldn’t get far. The new Freedom Riders were arrested, transported more than one hundred miles away to Tennessee, and dumped by the side of the road. But again, they were not deterred. The courageous young people simply drove back to Birmingham and attempted to board a bus, but the terrified driver refused to.

let them up.

By this point, the Kennedy administration had gotten even more serious and negotiated a settlement that Alabama and Greyhound officials would accompany the New Freedom Riders to Montgomery, and state police cars would protect the bus from any further mob violence. That should have provided a measure of safety for the Freedom Riders, but it did. The new bus would depart Birmingham on May twentieth. Quickly, they’d be traveling ninety miles per hour out of the city to avoid snipers and the mob violence that had marred the protests throughout the Deep South. But as soon as the bus left city limits, Alabama Highway Patrol would leave them to their own devices, and in Montgomery, another mob awaited them. A young White man, Jim’s Werg, valiantly stepped off first and was dragged down and beat severely by the mob. Two female riders were being pummeled: one by a woman swinging a purse at her head, while the other was punched in the face by a man. Shouts of “kill them out!” Had it not been for Floyd Mann — someone Mann was the director of Public Safety in Alabama when the Freedom Riders rode the state, and according to those who knew him, he was destined from birth to be a legendary lawman. He was a veteran, having served as a tailgunner on twenty-seven combat missions over Europe in a B-17, including the first daytime raid over Berlin. He had served distinction, having received the Distinguished Flying Cross and numerous other awards, come Warzett. By the time he was thirty, he had become chief of police in the sizeable Alabama town of Opelika, where he dismantled a gambling ring. And while he worked under Governor Patterson, who vehemently opposed the Riders, he was a man who believed in the rule of law and through. When Mann received information from a confidential source that the police in Montgomery planned to be on holiday when the Riders arrived, he jumped into a patrol car and sped to the scene. According to an account published in The Tuscaloosa News, quote, “he wheeled into the parking lot, pulled his revolver out of his gun belt, and placed it against the temple of the biggest, meanest, slick-backed, undershirt-wearing baseball bat holder, who was waiting at the door of the bus for the Freedom Riders.” He said, quote, “I’ll give you folks five minutes to all clear out of here, or I’ll start shooting with this fellow, and we’ll take names later for families.” That night, Martin Luther King Junior flew to Montgomery to speak. Protected by a ring of federal marshals, King addressed a mass rally of fifteen hundred people at First Baptist Church. He told the assembly, with his soaring rhetoric, “Alabama will have to face the fact that we are determined to be free.” “We are not afraid, and we shall overcome.” “So in the days ahead, let us not sink into the quicksands of violence.” “Rather, let us stand on the high ground of love and not injury.” “Let us continue to be strong spiritual mills that will wear out many a physical hammer.” Two days later, twenty-seven Freedom Riders finally boarded buses safely and headed toward New Orleans. At the Mississippi border, however, they were all arrested to take it to jail. Several additional attempts were made, but all suffered the same faith. Today, the story of the Freedom Riders lives on as a remarkable demonstration of bravery in resilience. Their indomitable will won over the hearts and minds of Americans who had heard about their fight for equality. A few short years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. The rule of law would prevail, and African Americans and White Americans could travel as equals across the nation.

And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Kirk Higgins. He’s the senior director of Content at the Bill of Rights Institute. And you can learn more about their great American History curriculum at mybri.org. That’s mybri.org. And what a story you heard about courage, selflessness, and pure, unadulterated racism! The story of the Freedom Rides of 1961. here on our American Stories.