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Freedom Riders

This research paper recounts the role of the Freedom Riders in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and assesses its significance. The Freedom Riders were relatively small groups of young black and white activists, mostly college students, who took to the nation's highways in the early 1960's to storm the ramparts of white segregationist practices in the Deep South.

The initial Freedom Rides of 1961 were hastily improvised affairs which triggered violent reactions by white extremists. The Freedom Riders bore the brunt of this reaction with considerable dignity in part due to their training in the tactics of non-violent resistance. The Freedom Riders, together with other confrontations spearheaded by young activists, helped reinvigorate the civil rights movement and transform it into a movement of mass protest. The activities of the Freedom Riders also exacerbated divisions within the movement and were a part of the broader generational and social conflicts of the turbulent 1960s. The Freedom Riders and Freedom Rides accelerated important changes in public attitudes toward racial issues in the South, led to stronger federal interventions in support of the movement and produced tangible gains for blacks. The lasting legacy of the Freedom Riders is more mixed, but nevertheless represents a vivid reminder of their courageous efforts to further the cause of equal rights for black Americans.

Origins of the Freedom Rides and the Freedom Riders

In April, 1961, James Farmer, the executive director of the Congress of Racial Equality, announced plans to send two busloads of young students into the Deep South to test Southern resistance to the integration of public facilities used in interstate transportation. At that time, the civil rights movement in the South had reached an impasse. The deeply entrenched pattern of segregation in the South which developed in the 1870s and later had not been significantly altered since then. Until...

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Freedom Riders. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 20:02, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692754.html