Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement
On May 4, 1961, a group of young people, known as the Freedom Riders, departed from Washington D.C. on a journey through the South. Their
purpose was to test the effectiveness of the Supreme Court ruling of Boynton v. Virginia (1960).
The decision of this case ended segregation in all facilities in
interstate rail and bus stations. However, like other Civil Rights legislation, this one was slow to take effect. A year after the ruling was handed down, almost
every bus station in the deep South remained segregated.
The Freedom Riders decided to integrate these facilities themselves, one bus station at a time, through
the use of direct nonviolent action. The nonviolent protest ,
however, was brutally received at many stops along the way