To the Initial 13 Freedom Riders

By Nana Dadzie Ghansah

Of all the civil rights fights the late Congressman John Lewis was involved in as a young activist, the one I find most impressive and daring was his participation in the Freedom Rides. He was one of the original group of thirteen men and women, who at the risk of injury and even death, set off from Washington DC on May 4, 1961, for New Orleans by two buses and ignited a movement that led to the end of the practice of segregating interstate bus travel and terminals in the south by November 1, 1961.

In 1946, in the case of Morgan v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled 7–1 that Virginia’s state law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was unconstitutional. Despite this ruling, states in the Jim Crow south refused to stop segregating buses and bus terminals.
Seeking to challenge this practice of segregation in the southern states, 19 (black and white) men and women set off from Washington DC on a journey to North Carolina on April 9, 1947. The aim was to challenge the segregation laws by disobeying them. It was called “the Journey of Reconciliation” and was organized Bayard Rustin of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Unfortunately, the two-week trip was not as impactful. However, it laid the groundwork for another journey down south with the same aim fourteen years later.