Poem Analysis: The Freedom Riders
American Experience
Freedom Rider
“Hallelujah I'm a traveling”
This line out of a song sang by travelers indicates how much joy traveling is, how much joy a ride through the country side, from one place to another, can be it gives the people freedom, to go places, to experience new things and not be bound to just one place anymore. It should have been an equally enjoyable experience to everybody, but when traveling with public transportation first became popular, it did not live up to those expectations. Not at all.
The group that started the Freedom Rides in May of 1961 were “The Freedom Riders” and they protested against the racial segregation and discrimination of the black African Americans or as they are called in the movie, …show more content…
the “Negros”. The Freedom Riders were ordinary people, White and Black, of all ages and both men and women, fighting for the freedom of all. At this point Slavery was no longer a problem, but the whites and the blacks had to use different facilities and it was made sure with signs that they would not use the same establishments, or even the same drinking fountains. Blacks were not served in 'Whites Only' places and vice versa. They were not allowed to sit in the same end of the bus. Segregation was exceptionally bad in the South, in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana. The Freedom Riders wanted to challenge segregation through nonviolent disobedience, by riding a bus from Washington D.C to Montgomery, Alabama.
The idea was to raise awareness to how bad the situation in the South really was. They anticipated not being served at certain stops, they anticipated harassment and they even anticipated getting arrested, as that would gain media coverage nationwide. In order to be prepared they had training sessions in which they acted out certain situations. They practiced nonviolent answers and behavior. What they did not for see or expect was the open and aggressive violence that they were about to meet in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama.
The Freedom Riders led a nonviolent protest and wanted the South to stop the segregation, the “Jim Crow” laws and they wanted to be able to share the same facilities and sit in the same part of a bus.
The Freedom Riders saw Martin Luther King as an icon for their nonviolent action, as he had established this principle. He wanted him to join their rides and were told by him that, according to his information, they would meet a great force against them in Alabama. He advised them to rethink continuing their ride. And even mentioned it might be a bad idea and could affect the success of the entire civil rights movement.
The result of the first wave of the Freedom Riders was frightening.
There were two busses leaving Atlanta in the morning, one Greyhoud and one Trailways to make their way to Birmingham, AL. They left an hour apart to make sure that one of them was going to reach the city. As the Greyhound bus was on the way to Birmingham, the locals in Anniston, a city right on the highway, prepared themselves to greet them with a surprise. The bus arrived in Anniston and the locals were harrassing and threatening the Freedom Riders, destroying bus windows and waiting for the people on the bus to get off. Somehow a bus driver managed to leave the bus stop and continued the route on the highway. About five miles outside of Anniston the bus had a flat tire, right where another mob awaited the Freedom Riders. They harassed them, threatened them and threw a fire bomb into the bus. Just as the buses' gas tank was about to explode the mob retreated, giving the Freedom Riders and the other passengers on the bus the chance to get off it. Just as they got off the mob started attacking them, beating them tremendously. They got beaten up until a police officer fired his gun in the air and stopped the …show more content…
violence.
The Southern local and state governments were creating a hostile environment for the Freedom Riders. Bull Conner, Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, stressed the necessity of the separation of Blacks and Whites. John Patterson, Governor of Alabama, talked about the Freedom Riders on a TV announcement stating that they were coming to provoke the locals and that they were to be met with violence. The chief of the police in Birmingham announced that no one was going to be arrested the first 15 minutes after the bus with the Freedom Riders arrived. When the Trailways bus arrived in Birmingham, it was met by a mob of about 1,000 people, beating them violently.
The next day they announced that they would continue the freedom ride, as it cannot be that a nonviolent movement gets stopped through violent actions.
The Kennedy Administration ignored the Freedom Riders entirely.
The did not do anything to prevent any of the happenings and they did not stop it either. The Kennedy Administration also did not want any distraction from their negotiations with the Sovjet Union and the Cold War. In addition to that they did not want to loose the support of the Southern states who helped them take over the government. The most important factor, however, was that J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, did not tell the president about the happenings in the South. He did not inform him about the violence that was going on and Kennedy was therefore not familiar with the situation. When he heard about it being spread all over the US through news and even the international press, he ordered the Freedom Riders to be protected, to fly them to New Orleans,
Louisianna.
After the first wave of the Freedom Riders failed to reach their goal, Montgomery, students at Fisk University in Tennessee gathered and decided to continue the Ride. They chose ten men and women from among them, had all of them write their testimonies and Last Wills, and they set out to finish the Freedom Ride. Diane Nash, one of them, said that a nonviolent movement should not stop because it is met by violence as that would send the wrong signals.
The city of Birmingham handled the Freedom Riders by agitating the locals and motivating them to meet the Riders with violence, even promising them that for a certain period of time no one would get convicted. Mississippi, in comparison, had the media spread the news to stay home when the buses arrived and to stay away from trouble. Where Birmingham created an hostile environment, Mississippi wanted to not let anything happen. When the Freedom Riders arrived, they were arrested and sent to Parchment Prison in order to teach them a lesson.
The Kennedy Administration helped in the end and supported the second wave of Freedom Riders with US troops in order to provide enough protection so they could finish their ride. He also talked to Patterson and enforced nonviolent behavior against the Freedom Riders.
As a result of the Freedom Rides not only the nation but worldwide news were reporting about it, about the situation in the US, that while the president was trying to negotiate equality for other countries he cannot even get it in his own. The second wave of Freedom Riders was being held captive in Parchment Prisons and more and more young people from all around the US started to ride the buses to Montgomery, every one being send to Parchment Prison. But the Riders anticipated this and took the risk of being sent to prison for nonviolent behavior. They wanted to end segregation and they wanted to raise awareness to the cause. They wanted the barriers of segregation to be removed and establish the right of all Americans to travel together and share the same rights.
On September 22nd in 1961 the ICC stopped the segregation and the signs were to be taken down. The nonviolent movement turned out to be a stroke of genius as Whites committed themselves to equalize the rights of all people. They saw it as their and their countries obligation to end interracial and inter regional separation. The shining moment of the movement was reached.
'Hallelujah I'm a traveling' had now become a true blessing for all travelers. It has been a long and hard road but the ones who fought the Civil War, the war against segregation, against violence and separation are the ones remembered today as heroes. The Freedom Riders believed that nonviolent behavior goes a long way and they proved that to be true. The story of their peaceful movement being met with rigorous violence went around the world, creating awareness, opening eyes and drawing attention to a situation kept quiet until then. The impact this movement had is tremendous, it changed the way people were treated and it made a whole country change their attitudes and laws. But most importantly- it made everyone equal before the law, it ended segregation not in public transportation but in every part of life.
Freedom Rider
“Hallelujah I'm a traveling”
This line out of a song sang by travelers indicates how much joy traveling is, how much joy a ride through the country side, from one place to another, can be it gives the people freedom, to go places, to experience new things and not be bound to just one place anymore. It should have been an equally enjoyable experience to everybody, but when traveling with public transportation first became popular, it did not live up to those expectations. Not at all.
The group that started the Freedom Rides in May of 1961 were “The Freedom Riders” and they protested against the racial segregation and discrimination of the black African Americans or as they are called in the movie, …show more content…
the “Negros”. The Freedom Riders were ordinary people, White and Black, of all ages and both men and women, fighting for the freedom of all. At this point Slavery was no longer a problem, but the whites and the blacks had to use different facilities and it was made sure with signs that they would not use the same establishments, or even the same drinking fountains. Blacks were not served in 'Whites Only' places and vice versa. They were not allowed to sit in the same end of the bus. Segregation was exceptionally bad in the South, in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana. The Freedom Riders wanted to challenge segregation through nonviolent disobedience, by riding a bus from Washington D.C to Montgomery, Alabama.
The idea was to raise awareness to how bad the situation in the South really was. They anticipated not being served at certain stops, they anticipated harassment and they even anticipated getting arrested, as that would gain media coverage nationwide. In order to be prepared they had training sessions in which they acted out certain situations. They practiced nonviolent answers and behavior. What they did not for see or expect was the open and aggressive violence that they were about to meet in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama.
The Freedom Riders led a nonviolent protest and wanted the South to stop the segregation, the “Jim Crow” laws and they wanted to be able to share the same facilities and sit in the same part of a bus.
The Freedom Riders saw Martin Luther King as an icon for their nonviolent action, as he had established this principle. He wanted him to join their rides and were told by him that, according to his information, they would meet a great force against them in Alabama. He advised them to rethink continuing their ride. And even mentioned it might be a bad idea and could affect the success of the entire civil rights movement.
The result of the first wave of the Freedom Riders was frightening.
There were two busses leaving Atlanta in the morning, one Greyhoud and one Trailways to make their way to Birmingham, AL. They left an hour apart to make sure that one of them was going to reach the city. As the Greyhound bus was on the way to Birmingham, the locals in Anniston, a city right on the highway, prepared themselves to greet them with a surprise. The bus arrived in Anniston and the locals were harrassing and threatening the Freedom Riders, destroying bus windows and waiting for the people on the bus to get off. Somehow a bus driver managed to leave the bus stop and continued the route on the highway. About five miles outside of Anniston the bus had a flat tire, right where another mob awaited the Freedom Riders. They harassed them, threatened them and threw a fire bomb into the bus. Just as the buses' gas tank was about to explode the mob retreated, giving the Freedom Riders and the other passengers on the bus the chance to get off it. Just as they got off the mob started attacking them, beating them tremendously. They got beaten up until a police officer fired his gun in the air and stopped the …show more content…
violence.
The Southern local and state governments were creating a hostile environment for the Freedom Riders. Bull Conner, Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, stressed the necessity of the separation of Blacks and Whites. John Patterson, Governor of Alabama, talked about the Freedom Riders on a TV announcement stating that they were coming to provoke the locals and that they were to be met with violence. The chief of the police in Birmingham announced that no one was going to be arrested the first 15 minutes after the bus with the Freedom Riders arrived. When the Trailways bus arrived in Birmingham, it was met by a mob of about 1,000 people, beating them violently.
The next day they announced that they would continue the freedom ride, as it cannot be that a nonviolent movement gets stopped through violent actions.
The Kennedy Administration ignored the Freedom Riders entirely.
The did not do anything to prevent any of the happenings and they did not stop it either. The Kennedy Administration also did not want any distraction from their negotiations with the Sovjet Union and the Cold War. In addition to that they did not want to loose the support of the Southern states who helped them take over the government. The most important factor, however, was that J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, did not tell the president about the happenings in the South. He did not inform him about the violence that was going on and Kennedy was therefore not familiar with the situation. When he heard about it being spread all over the US through news and even the international press, he ordered the Freedom Riders to be protected, to fly them to New Orleans,
Louisianna.
After the first wave of the Freedom Riders failed to reach their goal, Montgomery, students at Fisk University in Tennessee gathered and decided to continue the Ride. They chose ten men and women from among them, had all of them write their testimonies and Last Wills, and they set out to finish the Freedom Ride. Diane Nash, one of them, said that a nonviolent movement should not stop because it is met by violence as that would send the wrong signals.
The city of Birmingham handled the Freedom Riders by agitating the locals and motivating them to meet the Riders with violence, even promising them that for a certain period of time no one would get convicted. Mississippi, in comparison, had the media spread the news to stay home when the buses arrived and to stay away from trouble. Where Birmingham created an hostile environment, Mississippi wanted to not let anything happen. When the Freedom Riders arrived, they were arrested and sent to Parchment Prison in order to teach them a lesson.
The Kennedy Administration helped in the end and supported the second wave of Freedom Riders with US troops in order to provide enough protection so they could finish their ride. He also talked to Patterson and enforced nonviolent behavior against the Freedom Riders.
As a result of the Freedom Rides not only the nation but worldwide news were reporting about it, about the situation in the US, that while the president was trying to negotiate equality for other countries he cannot even get it in his own. The second wave of Freedom Riders was being held captive in Parchment Prisons and more and more young people from all around the US started to ride the buses to Montgomery, every one being send to Parchment Prison. But the Riders anticipated this and took the risk of being sent to prison for nonviolent behavior. They wanted to end segregation and they wanted to raise awareness to the cause. They wanted the barriers of segregation to be removed and establish the right of all Americans to travel together and share the same rights.
On September 22nd in 1961 the ICC stopped the segregation and the signs were to be taken down. The nonviolent movement turned out to be a stroke of genius as Whites committed themselves to equalize the rights of all people. They saw it as their and their countries obligation to end interracial and inter regional separation. The shining moment of the movement was reached.
'Hallelujah I'm a traveling' had now become a true blessing for all travelers. It has been a long and hard road but the ones who fought the Civil War, the war against segregation, against violence and separation are the ones remembered today as heroes. The Freedom Riders believed that nonviolent behavior goes a long way and they proved that to be true. The story of their peaceful movement being met with rigorous violence went around the world, creating awareness, opening eyes and drawing attention to a situation kept quiet until then. The impact this movement had is tremendous, it changed the way people were treated and it made a whole country change their attitudes and laws. But most importantly- it made everyone equal before the law, it ended segregation not in public transportation but in every part of life.