Freedom Rides 1961

The Freedom Rides, on inter-state buses through the South, reflect an important feature of the civil rights movement. The aim was to shame the federal government into action which would safeguard African-American rights. As James Farmer, founder of CORE, stated:

'We planned the Freedom Rides with the specific intention of creating a crisis. We were counting on the bigots of the South to do our work for us. We figured that the government would have to respond if we created a situation that was headline news all over the world, and affecting the nation's image abroad. An international crisis that was our strategy.'

All CORE planned to do was to find out if the law against segregation on inter-state…