In Touch With The Freedom Riders of 1961
By Betty Miller Buttram
FWIS Contributing Writer
Every movement, mission, or purpose has an origin. An event occurs that initiates action. In this instance, it began with a young man ordering a cheeseburger at a restaurant in Richmond, Virginia in 1958.
Bruce Boynton (June 19, 1937 – November 23. 2020) was a law student at Howard University in 1958. He was in a restaurant at an interstate bus terminal in Richmond, Virginia, and he ordered a cheeseburger while sitting in a whites only section. He was asked to leave the restaurant. He refused to leave the restaurant and was charged with trespassing, arrested, and spent one night in jail. Boynton grew up in Selma, Alabama and his parents were civil rights activists. Boynton decided to fight his arrest in court. He lost his case and decided to appeal it. It reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where Thurgood Marshall argued on his behalf. In 1960, the conviction was overturned, ruling that racial discrimination in public transportation violated the Interstate Commerce Act. This act broadly prohibited discrimination in interstate passenger transport. The decision also allowed the federal government to regulate and prohibit racial discrimination in the bus industry. The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) did not enforce this ruling, so segregated Southern travel laws remained in place. That blindness to the ruling of the law sparked an opening for a movement, a mission, and a purpose which resulted in 436 individuals participating as Freedom Riders.
The Freedom Riders' mission was to desegregate interstate buses and terminals, and to end racial segregation in all waiting rooms and lunch counters. These were college students who had become civil rights activists recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which sponsored most of the rides to the South. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) also helped in the organization of the rides. The first Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1961, on a Greyhound bus bound for New Orleans, La. The arrival date was May 17th. They were met with mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama where their buses were firebombed, burned and they were beaten with baseball bats, iron pipes, bicycle chains. They made it to New Orleans, but they flew into the city.
Charles Person, who was the youngest Freedom Rider, died on January 8, 2025. He was a member of the original 13 Freedom Riders who departed from Washington, D.C. aboard that bus on May 4, 1961. Person was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and attended Morehouse College. He was only 18 years old in a group of 12 other Civil Rights activists travelling by bus through the south. He later joined the military and served in the Vietnam War and retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1981. Person co-founded the Freedom Riders Training Academy in Anniston, Alabama. Its mission is to educate individuals about the principles of peaceful demonstration and the lasting significance of civic engagement and nonviolent resistance. He felt that young people need to understand what has happened and that the freedoms they enjoyed did not come without struggles and suffering. With Person’s passing, Hank Thomas remains the last living original Freedom Rider.
Hank Thomas was born on August 29, 1941, in Jacksonville, Florida. Thomas attended Howard University and participated in many lunch counter sit-ins and became one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC). On May 4, 1961, Thomas joined the first Freedom Rider group, the group leaving D.C. for New Orleans. He participated in a second Freedom Ride from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi. He was arrested and served time at the Parchman State Prison Farm. Thomas was soon released on bail, on August 22, 1961, he became the first rider to appeal his conviction for the breach of peace. The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1964, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed it in 1965. After the Freedom Rides and the Vietnam War, Thomas moved to Atlanta and became a successful entrepreneur.
In recent weeks, I have been reflecting on the impact of Freedom Riders. They boarded buses to challenge and dismantle discriminatory practices in public accommodations. Those are times we should not seek to revisit. We must prepare for a new journey, even if its destination is uncertain. This journey requires responsible action to ensure it leads to a democratic outcome.