Freedom Rides Timeline

The riders successfully completed portions of their journey through Virginia and the Carolinas. Their travel documented the gap between federal law and the practices still enforced across the South.

The 1961 riders successfully completed their journey through Georgia after traveling through Virginia and the Carolinas. Their progress demonstrated the organizers’ determination to continue despite violence and resistance.

May 4, 1961, marked the beginning of the first Freedom Ride. The interracial riders set out to expose and challenge the continued segregation of buses and bus terminals despite Supreme Court decisions prohibiting it.

The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961. The riders were scheduled to reach New Orleans on May 17, traveling through the segregated South to test federal rulings on interstate transportation.

On Mother’s Day, a mob of Klansmen attacked one of the two Greyhound buses in Anniston, Alabama. Some attackers were still wearing church attire, and the violence became one of the defining assaults of the Freedom Rides.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent a petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission asking it to comply with the bus-desegregation ruling issued in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company in November 1955.

Freedom Riders were arrested in Tallahassee, Florida, on June 16, 1961, for unlawful assembly. The arrests led to convictions and a prolonged legal challenge.

Freedom Riders arrived in Little Rock, Arkansas, in July 1961 as part of the continuing campaign against racial discrimination in interstate travel and public facilities.

Fifteen Episcopal priests, including three Black priests and twelve white priests, entered the Trailways bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi, on September 13, 1961.

Under pressure from Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department, the Interstate Commerce Commission’s new policies took effect on November 1, 1961. They ended racial segregation in interstate bus waiting rooms and lunch counters, six years after the Sarah Keys ruling.

Image source: Interstate Commerce Commission

The case against the Episcopal priests arrested in Jackson was dismissed on May 21, 1962. The priests then sought damages from police under the Civil Rights Act of 1871.

Image source: Pierson v. Ray

The convictions arising from the Tallahassee arrests were appealed to the United States Supreme Court in 1963. The Court refused to hear the case on jurisdictional grounds.

The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the Tallahassee Freedom Riders’ case in 1963, citing jurisdictional reasons.

The Tallahassee 10 returned to the city in 1964 to serve brief jail sentences connected with the unlawful-assembly convictions.

In 1965, the Tallahassee convictions were vacated because Black citizens had been excluded from jury selection.

In Pierson v. Ray, the Supreme Court ultimately rejected the priests’ claims against the police. The decision held that police were protected by the court-created doctrine of qualified immunity.