Civil Rights Movement: Freedom Riders |
|
||
The Freedom Riders were started to try and gain equality for all races. Many of the people who were in the freedom riders were arrested for what they believe in. They started off in Washington DC on May 4th 1961, traveled down into Virginia, then North Carolina, South Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia and Mississippi. The people had problems with Rock Hill Church, finding resistance, and also being arrested in Charlotte North Carolina. They got to meat with Martin Luther King Jr. on May 14th 1941. Aside from being arrested, they faced problems with people firebombing the bus. The second bus that was traveling with them made it to Birmingham Alabama, but then had problems with the Ku Klux Klan who were helped by the police, and many of them were brutally beaten. They were forced to finish their journey to New Orleans by a plane, under the protection of the Kennedy administration, but there were new students from Nashville, Tennessee who decided to step in and continue the journey. In Montgomery Alabama there were many riders, and about 1500 supporters trapped inside The First Baptist Church by angry mobs who didn't want the riders to complete the journey. There were federal troops that were dispatched and told to protect the riders. After leaving Alabama the riders were arrested for their own protection. The jail in Jackson Mississippi was where the riders who decided to continue were put for the rest of the summer of 1961.