


The original group of 13 Freedom Riders, consisting of seven African-American and six white people, left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus on May 4, 1961.The sit-ins involved primarily college students who sat at white-only lunch counters, which led to violent beatings by the mostly white opposition.In 1961, resurrecting the ‘Journey’ seemed appropriate, as the CORE-inspired lunch counter sit-ins of February, 1960, had brought the problem of segregation to the national stage.The group only got as far as Chapel Hill, NC, where they were met with violent resistance and arrest.In 1947, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized an earlier attempt to end segregation on public bus transportation called The Journey of Reconciliation, an interracial ride from Washington D.C.The groups were confronted by police officers, as well as horrific violence from white protesters along their routes.

Freedom Riders tried to use whites-only restrooms and lunch counters at bus stations in Alabama, South Carolina and other Southern states.Supreme Court decisions mandated an end to segregation, or the separation of blacks and whites, many bus depots in the South as well as the buses themselves were still segregated. They rode as part of the Civil Rights Movement, trying to gain equality for all.Freedom Riders is a term used to refer to those who rode interstate buses into segregated states in 1961.See the fact file below for more information on Freedom Riders or alternatively, you can download our comprehensive worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment. Download the Freedom Riders Facts & Worksheets.
