“We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death”: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961 (via Gale Scholar Accelerate Program)

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Freedom Riders were civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated South to test the United States Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia, which outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses.


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