Ain’t Scared of Your Jails

Ain’t Scared of Your Jails

The Freedom Rides were composed of both white and black citizens who would ride on a greyhound bus into the major cities of the South, in order to protest segregation. The white Freedom Riders would sit in the back of the bus, while the black Freedom Rider’s sat up front. At their stops, the white Rider’s would use the “black only” facilities and waiting rooms, while the Black freedom Rider’s would use the “white only” facilities. The group of both white and black citizens faced mobs and violence, and had no police protection from the Southern state governments until Robert Kennedy stepped in. When Alabama failed to protect the freedom riders when they rode into Birmingham, where a huge white mob attacked the rider’s, the U.S. Marshalls where issued in to protect the Freedom Rider’s bus, thanks to Robert Kennedy and Robert Patterson. Along with the U.S. Marshalls, FBI men, State troopers, and state police followed the bus, prepared to stop any mobs or any attacks against the freedom rider’s.

What the Freedom Ride’s stood for was the most important role they played in the civil rights movement, and in getting ride of southern segregation of the time. It was a group of both black and white American citizens, standing up against the norm’s of the time, and fighting against the civil wrongs that were being done against African American’s by their state’s that were supposed to be protecting them rather than suppressing them with segregation laws. Through the rider’s persistence, and through their determined non-violence, the freedom ride’s forced the government to make a choice; either stop segregation, or be faced with an even larger separation of American citizens with more violence being done amongst them.