Freedom Riders: Washington to Jackson, 1961

Led by CORE's director James Farmer, thirteen riders — seven black and six white, among them 21-year-old John Lewis — left Washington on 4 May 1961, split between a Greyhound and a Trailways bus. At every stop they would sit together and use the facilities marked for the other race, with one rider obeying the rules so that he could call for bail if the others were arrested. They planned to reach New Orleans on 17 May. The ride was modelled on CORE's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation.

Location precision: The riders left from the city's two bus terminals; the pin marks the former Greyhound terminal on New York Avenue.

Through Virginia and North Carolina there was only minor trouble. Then, at the bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina, John Lewis was attacked when he tried to use the white waiting room. Lewis, a student at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville who had already taken part in the city's lunch-counter sit-ins, went on to chair the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and, from 1987 until his death in 2020, to represent Georgia in Congress.

Location precision: The old bus station isn't pinned; the pin marks central Rock Hill.

On Sunday 14 May, Mother's Day, a Klan mob, some still in church clothes, attacked the Greyhound bus at the Anniston depot, slashed its tyres, broke its windows and chased it out of town. Six miles west on the old Birmingham highway the crippled bus stopped; the mob threw a flaming bundle of rags inside, it exploded and the bus caught fire, and the riders were attacked as they fled. A photograph of the burning bus became an icon of the civil rights movement. The site is part of the Freedom Riders National Monument.

Visitor guidance: The former Greyhound depot at 1031 Gurnee Avenue, with murals and panels, is also part of the monument; check opening days with the National Park Service.

That afternoon the Trailways bus reached Birmingham. The police commissioner, Bull Connor, had promised the local Klan fifteen minutes to attack before any arrests, and the police held back while the riders stepped off and were beaten with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains. James Peck needed more than fifty stitches to his head. With mobs reported waiting on the road ahead, the original riders gave up the bus and flew to New Orleans. The Freedom Ride seemed to be over.

Location precision: The 1961 Trailways station isn't pinned; the pin marks downtown Birmingham.

Diane Nash and the Nashville students refused to let violence end the ride, and on 20 May a new group set off from Birmingham to Montgomery. The state highway patrol escorting them dropped away at the city limits, and at the Greyhound station on South Court Street a white mob was waiting. Riders, reporters and a Justice Department official, John Seigenthaler, were beaten in the street. The station is now the Freedom Rides Museum, opened for the 50th anniversary in 2011.

Visitor guidance: The Freedom Rides Museum occupies the old station on South Court Street; check its opening times before you go.

The next night, 21 May, more than 1,500 people packed into Reverend Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church to honour the riders, with Martin Luther King Jr. among the speakers. Outside, a mob of more than 3,000 broke windows with rocks and set off tear gas, and only a handful of US marshals protected the church while city and state police did nothing. When President Kennedy threatened to send federal troops, Governor Patterson finally ordered the National Guard in, and it reached the church in the early morning.

On 24 May the riders set out for Mississippi, guarded this time by the highway patrol and the National Guard under a deal struck by the Kennedy administration. The buses reached Jackson without incident, and the riders were promptly arrested for trying to use the white-only facilities at the Tri-State Trailways depot. That set the pattern for the summer: ride after ride came to Jackson, the riders were arrested, and their strategy became to fill the jails. More than 300 were arrested there and in the Carolinas.

Location precision: The Trailways depot isn't pinned; the pin marks downtown Jackson.

When the Jackson and Hinds County jails overflowed, the state sent the Freedom Riders to the Mississippi State Penitentiary, the notorious Parchman Farm in the Delta. Many were put in the maximum security unit, on death row, given only underwear and no mail; when they kept singing freedom songs, guards took away their mattresses and toothbrushes. At one point more than 300 riders were held here. Under pressure from Robert Kennedy's Justice Department, the Interstate Commerce Commission banned segregation in bus terminals from 1 November 1961.