Inventory of the Freedom Riders Collection

Overview of Collection

Repository: Tougaloo College, L. Zenobia Coleman Library, Special Collections and College Archives

Collector: Tougaloo College

Collection Number: 90.13

Title: Freedom Riders Collection

Dates: 1961,1990-2001

Quantity: 0.5 cubic ft.

Abstract: Materials relating to the Freedom Riders, a group of racially-integrated activists organized by CORE (Congress for Racial Equality) who challenged segregation in public transportation by staging "Freedom Rides" across the South in 1961. The collection focuses on the events surrounding the Freedom Riders’ arrival, arrests, and incarceration while in Mississippi. In addition, it also contains programs, leaflets, and other printed items documenting reunions and conferences pertaining to the Freedom Riders held in 1991 and 2001.

Biographical and Historical Note

In 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized a "Journey of Reconciliation," purposing in mind to test the Supreme Court’s 1946 ruling in the Irene Morgan Case, which declared segregated seating of interstate passengers unconstitutional. The traveling interracial group of volunteers was met early with heavy resistance in the Upper South, which had been considered in the past to be somewhat more moderate than the lower southern states. Members of the group were even arrested and made to serve out a chain gang sentence in North Carolina. The effort quickly unraveled and would not resurface, in any organized concerted effort, until the following decade.

In the meantime, African Americans in the South who protested against segregated transportation were typically arrested and fined. However, on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress in Birmingham, Alabama, refused to relinquish her bus seat at the request of a bus driver for a white man. Ms. Parks was subsequently arrested, but managed to get the attention of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King who was a local pastor and emerging Civil Rights Leader. Dr. King, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other numerous sympathetic factions organized a 13 month city wide bus boycott that brought the white financial establishment of Montgomery to its knees. Eventually, the city conceded not only to impartial bus seating but more inclusive hiring practices in both public and private sectors. While this certainly proved to be a great victory for African-Americans in Montgomery, most of the South continued to enforce discriminatory laws. Southern public transit segregation would not meet wide formidable opposition until the 1960’s.

James Farmer, the National Director of CORE, and 13 volunteers left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, once again decided to test the Federal government’s resolve against discriminatory interstate practices. During this perilous trek, many other volunteers from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama joined their ranks. A second group of Riders left Nashville, Tennessee, on May 14, 1961, headed for Birmingham, Alabama, where they joined with the first group of Freedom Riders. They made their arrival to Jackson, Mississippi, on May 25, 1961, and were met with violence and sentences in the state’s penitentiary. These actions sparked, en masse, more racially mixed groups from the North to mimic the actions of their predecessors throughout the Summer of 1961. This great outpouring of response put even more pressure on the President John F. Kennedy’s Administration to actively ensure that non-discriminatory federal regulations be upheld in the American South.

In turn, United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to draft regulations to end racial segregation in bus terminals. In September of 1961, the commission issued new policies overriding local and state Jim Crow travel laws. The policies went into effect on November 1, 1961.

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Scope and Content Note

This collection contains photocopies of correspondence, photographs, and newsclippings documenting the Freedom Riders. The collection focuses on the events surrounding the Freedom Riders’ arrival, arrests, and incarceration in Mississippi. In addition, it also contains programs, leaflets, and other printed items documenting reunions and conferences pertaining to the Freedom Riders held in 1991 and 2001.

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Topics Covered

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Administrative Information

This collection was compiled by the Tougaloo College Archives in 1990.

None.

This collection may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).

Patrons wishing to cite this collection should use the following format: [Description of items], [Date], [Folder number, Box number], Freedom Riders Collection, Tougaloo College, L. Zenobia Coleman Library, Archives.

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Related Material

In the Tougaloo College Civil Rights Collection housed at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, see the Carol Ruth Silver Papers.

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Container List

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