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What role did nonviolence play in the movement?

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What role did nonviolence play in the movement?

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What role did nonviolence play in the movement?

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What was life like for black people in the South under Jim Crow?

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What was life like for black people in the South under Jim Crow?

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What was life like for black people in the South under Jim Crow?

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Victory for Nonviolence | American Experience | PBS

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The Freedom Rides were one of the earliest demonstrations that Gandhian principles of nonviolence could be effective in the civil rights movement.

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The leadership of the Civil Rights Movement was largely defined by major figures like Martin Luther King Jr., but behind the scenes were people like Lola Hendricks who helped organize the community and filed lawsuits to end discrimination and segregation. In this interview, Hendricks describes her role in the Civil Rights movement.

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Lola Hendricks

The leadership of the Civil Rights Movement was largely defined by major figures like Martin Luther King Jr., but behind the scenes were people like Lola Hendricks who helped organize the community and filed lawsuits to end discrimination and segregation. In this interview, Hendricks describes her role in the Civil Rights movement.

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The leadership of the Civil Rights Movement was largely defined by major figures like Martin Luther King Jr., but behind the scenes were people like Lola Hendricks who helped organize the community and filed lawsuits to end discrimination and segregation. In this interview, Hendricks describes her role in the Civil Rights movement.

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Robert F. Kennedy's Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Speech

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Robert F. Kennedy's Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Speech

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Robert F. Kennedy's Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Speech

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Get on the Bus- Freedom Rides of 1961.pdf

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AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Freedom Riders: The Movement

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Freedom Riders | Article
Ralph Abernathy, Montgomery, AL
Rev. Ralph Abernathy was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and beyond. As the young pastor of First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Al, he and Martin Luther King, Jr. were among the leaders of the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott organized in response to the arrest of Rosa Parks.

In 1961, Abernathy's First Baptist Church was the site of the May 21 "siege" where an angry mob of white segregationists surrounded 1,500 people inside the sanctuary. At one point, the situation seemed so dire that Abernathy and King considered giving themselves up to the mob to save the men, women, and children in the sanctuary.

When reporters asked Abernathy to respond to Robert Kennedy's complaint that the Freedom Riders were embarrassing the United States in front of the world, Abernathy responded, "Well, doesn't the Attorney General know we've been embarrassed all our lives?"

On May 25, Abernathy was arrested on breach of peace charges after escorting William Sloane Coffin's Connecticut Freedom Ride to the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Terminal, neither the first nor the last instance of civil disobedience in a lifetime of activism.

After Dr. King's assassination on April 4, 1968, Abernathy took up the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Poor People's Campaign and led the 1968 March on Washington. Ralph Abernathy died in 1990.
Catherine Burks-Brooks, Birmingham, AL

Birmingham, AL native, 21-year-old Catherine Burks was a student at Tennessee State University when she volunteered for the Nashville Movement Freedom Ride. On May 18, she bantered with the ultra-segregationist Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor as he drove the Nashville riders from jail back to the Tennessee state line.

In Freedom Riders, Burks says she borrowed a line from the Westerns of the day, telling Connor, "We'll see you back in Birmingham by high noon."

Two days later, she found herself in a riot at the Montgonery Greyhound Bus Station. In Freedom Riders, she vividly recalls the assault on fellow Freedom Rider Jim Zwerg. "Some men held him while white women clawed his face with their nails. And they held up their little children --children who couldn't have been more than a couple years old -- to claw his face. I had to turn my head back because I just couldn't watch it."

She described the beginning of the siege of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery by an angry segregationist mob on the following day. "I heard a rock hit the window. Some of us got up to look out the window and we got hit by more rocks. That's when a little fear came."

In August 1961, she married fellow Freedom Rider Paul Brooks. They were later active in the Mississippi voter registration movement, co-editing the Mississippi Free Press from 1962-1963. In the decades following the Freedom Rides, Burks owned a successful jewelry boutique and worked as a social worker, teacher, and Avon cosmetics sales manager.
Stokely Carmichael, Bronx, NY
At the time of the Freedom Rides, Stokely Carmichael was a 19-year-old student at Howard University, the son of West Indian immigrants to New York City. Carmichael made the journey to Jackson, MS from New Orleans, LA on June 4, 1961 by train, along with eight other riders, including JOan Trumpauer.

The group was ushered by Jackson police to a waiting paddy wagon; all Riders refused bail. Carmichael was transferred to Parchman State Prison Farm, which proved to be a crucible and testing ground for future Movement leaders. Other Freedom Riders recalled his quick wit and hard-nosed political realism from their shared time at Parchman.

The acerbic Carmichael would go on to become one of the leading voices of the Black Power Movement. In 1966 Carmichael became Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) chairman and, in 1967, honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party. He moved to West Africa in 1969, and changed his name to Kwame Ture in honor of African leaders Kwame Nkruma and Sekou Toure, later traveling the world as a proponent of the All African Peoples Revolutionary Party. He died in Conakry, Guinea in 1998 of prostate cancer at the age of 57.

In his posthumously published autobiography, Carmichael spoke about the significance of the Freedom Rides: "CORE would be sending an integrated team-black and white together-from the nation's capital to New Orleans on public transportation. That's all. Except, of course, that they would sit randomly on the buses in integrated pairs and in the stations they would use waiting room facilities casually, ignoring the white/colored signs. What could be more harmless... in any even marginally healthy society?"
Benjamin Elton Cox, High Point, NC
Part of the original May 4 CORE Freedom Ride, the Rev. Benjamin Elton Cox was an outspoken black minister based in High Point, NC who had traveled through the region spreading the gospel of nonviolence during the spring and summer of 1960. Cox also participated in the July 8-15, 1961 Missouri to Louisiana CORE Freedom Ride.

Defending the actions of the Freedom Riders, Cox argues in Freedom Riders, "If men like Governor Patterson [of Alabama] and Governor Barnett of Mississippi... would carry out the good oath of their office, then people would be able to travel in this country. Then people in Tel Aviv and Moscow and London would not pick up their newspaper for breakfast and realize that America is not living up to the dream of liberty and justice for all."

The preacher and longtime civil rights activist was arrested 17 times over the course of several decades. Prior to retirement, he served as minister at Pilgrim Congregational Church in High Point, NC, as chaplain at the VA Hospital in Urbana, IL, and as a middle school counselor in Jackson, TN.
Glenda Gaither Davis, Great Falls, SC
A student at Claflin College in Orangeburg, SC, 18-year-old Glenda Gaither -sister of CORE field secretary Tom Gaither- was already a veteran of the state's sit-in movement to end lunch counter segregation. On May 30, 1961, she arrived in ackson, MS as part of the first group of eight Freedom Riders from New Orleans, LA to conduct tests at a railway terminal. When they attempted to use the white restrooms, they were arrested for disorderly conduct and sentenced within the hour to a $200 fine and a 60-day jail term.

In 1965 Gaither married her boyfriend Jim Davis, a participant in the same ride, and later worked as a job placement director at Spelman College.

She recalls in Freedom Riders, "Even though we came from many different places and we had many different cultures and many different home environments, in some ways we were very much unified because we had a common cause... we knew that we had taken a stand and that there was something better out there for us."
Rabbi Israel "Si" Dresner, Springfield, NJ James Farmer, New York, NY
Co-founder and National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), James "Jim" Farmer was the architect of the original CORE Freedom Ride of 1961. He saw the significance of desegregating interstate travel and the potential of repeating CORE's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation as a movement tactic. He endorsed a new name, "Freedom Ride," to win media attention and better communicate the mission and goals of the trip.

A child prodigy who earned early fame as a debater, Farmer grew up in Marshall, Texas, where his father, James L. Farmer, Sr. was a professor at the historically black Wiley College. Farmer devoted his career to civil rights and social justice causes, working for the NAACP and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), CORE's parent organization, prior to his February 1961 election as director of CORE.

Farmer's signature initiative was the Freedom Rides, initiated just three months after he took office. At that time, CORE was less well known than the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Coalition (SCLC) or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Farmer envisioned the ride as a way to vault CORE and its philosophy of nonviolent direct action to prominence on the national stage, with attendant opportunities for policy-making and fundraising.

Farmer took part in the ride, but returned to Washington, D.C. from Atlanta, GA on the morning of May 14 for his father's funeral. He was haunted by guilt as a result, especially since he was spared from some of the Rides' worst violence - the May 14 Anniston, AL Greyhound bus burning and the Birmingham, AL Trailways Bus Station Riot.

Farmer later recalled his emotions upon learning of his father's death in Atlanta. "There was, of course, the incomparable sorrow and pain," he said. "But frankly, there was also a sense of reprieve, for which I hated myself. Like everyone else, I was afraid of what lay in store for us in Alabama, and now that I was to be spared participation in it, I was relieved, which embarrassed me to tears."

On May 21, Farmer flew to rejoin the riders in Montgomery, AL. Upon arriving in Jackson, MS, three days later, Farmer was jailed for "breach of peace" and other charges and later was transferred to Mississippi's notorious Parchman State Prison Farm.

Historians acknowledge Farmer's central visionary role in bringing the Freedom Rides to fruition.

In 1966, Farmer eventually left CORE and the Civil Rights Movement, citing its growing acceptance of racial separation as his reason. He served in the Nixon Administration as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and co-founded the Fund for an Open Society in 1975. President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

James Farmer died from complications of diabetes in 1999.
William Harbour, Piedmont, AL

A native of Piedmont, AL, William Harbour was the oldest of eight children and the first member of his family to go to college. At age 19, while a student at Tennessee State University, he had already participated in civil disobedience, traveling to Rock Hill, SC to serve jail time in solidarity with the "Rock Hill Nine" - nine students imprisoned after a lunch counter sit-in.

One of the first to exit the bus when the Nashville Movement Freedom Ride arrived at the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station, Harbour encountered a mob of 200 people wielding lead pipes and baseball bats. Harbour survived the riot but after the end of the Freedom Rides, still faced hostility in his native Alabama. He was also one of 14 Freedom Riders expelled from Tennessee State University.

"Be best for you not to come [home]," his mother warned him in 1961. With the exception of one brief visit, he stayed away from Piedmont for the next five years.

After the Freedom Rides, Harbour taught school for several years, and eventually became a civilian federal employee specializing in U.S. Army base closings. Today, Harbour acts as the unofficial archivist of the Freedom Rider Movement. He moved to Atlanta, GA in 1969.
Genevieve Hughes Houghton, Washington, DC Pauline Knight-Ofusu, Nashville, TN

Credit: WGBH

Part of the May 28 wave of Freedom Riders from the Nashville Student Movement, Pauline Knight-Ofusu escaped the violence of the earlier rides. Pauline Knight was a 20-year-old Tennessee State student when she was arrested in Jackson, MS. After being transferred to Hinds County Jail, she led a brief hunger strike among the female Riders.

"I got up one morning in May and I said to my folks at home, 'I won't be back today because I am a Freedom Rider,'" said Knight-Ofusu in her interview for Freedom Riders. "It was like a wave or a wind, and you didn't know where it was coming from but you knew you were supposed to be there. Nobody asked me, nobody told me."
Bernard Lafayette Jr., Tampa, FL

James Lawson, Nashville, TN

Thirty-two-year-old Rev. James Lawson introduced the principles of Gandhian nonviolence to many future leaders of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Born in western Pennsylvania and raised in Ohio, he spent a year in prison as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, as well as three years as a Methodist missionary in India, where he was deeply influenced by the philosophy and techniques of nonviolent resistance developed by Mohandas Gandhi and his followers.

While enrolled as a divinity student at Oberlin College, Lawson met Martin Luther King, Jr., who urged Lawson to postpone his studies and take an active role in the Civil Rights Movement. "We don't have anyone like you," King told him.

Following King's advice, Lawson headed South as a field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. In Nashville, TN, he helped organize the Nashville Student Movement's successful sit-in campaign of 1960 and was expelled from Vanderbilt University School of Divinity as a result. He trained Diane Nash; Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis and many others through his famous workshops on the tactics of nonviolent direct action.

When the original CORE Freedom Ride stalled in Birmingham, AL, Lawson urged the Nashville Student Movement to continue the Freedom Rides. He conducted workshops on nonviolent resistance while the Freedom Riders spent several days holed up in the Montgomery, AL home of Dr. Richard Harris. During an impromptu press conference on the National Guard-escorted bus that traveled from Montgomery to Jackson, MS, he told reporters that the Freedom Riders "would rather risk violence and be able to travel like ordinary passengers" than rely on armed guards who did not understand their philosophy of combating "violence and hate" by "absorbing it without returning it in kind."

In 1968, Lawson chaired the strike committee for sanitation workers in Memphis, TN. At Lawson's request, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the striking workers on the day before his assassination. In 1974, Lawson moved to Los Angeles to lead Holman United Methodist Church where he served as pastor for 25 years before retiring in 1999. Throughout his career and into retirement, he has remained active in various human rights advocacy campaigns, including immigrant rights and opposition to war and militarism. In recent years he has been a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University.
Frederick Leonard, Chattanooga, TN

A student at Tennessee State University, Leonard was active in the Nashville sit-in movement in 1960-61 before taking part in the May 17 Nashville Movement Freedom Ride. He faced an angry, violent mob upon arriving at the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station on May 20, and was imprisoned at Parchman State Prison Farm after reaching Jackson, MS. fter his release from Parchman in August 1961, he traveled to participate in the effort to convert the militant black leader Robert Williams to non-violence.

He later married fellow Freedom Rider Joy Reagon.
John Lewis, Troy, AL

Ivor "Jerry" Moore

Ivor "Jerry" Moore was part of the original 1961 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Ride, joining the ride in Sumter, SC on May 11. He was present at the Klan-organized riot on May 14 at the Birmingham Trailways Bus Station. The son of a Baptist minister from the Bronx, Moore had already been involved in several sit-ins and marches against segregation as a student at Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina before participating in the Freedom Rides.

After graduating from college in 1964, he became a folk and rock musician in Greenwich Village and Woodstock, NY. Moore moved to Los Angeles in 1980, where he conducted street ministry for drug addicts and the homeless, taught computer skills, and coordinated church outreach activities.
Mae Francis Moultrie, Sumter, SC

Twenty-four-year-old Morris College student Mae Frances Moultrie was the only African-American female on the original May 4 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Ride, joining the ride on May 11th in Sumter, SC. She suffered severe smoke inhalation during the firebombing and burning of the Greyhound bus on May 14 by an angry Klan mob at the Forsyth Grocery Store outside Anniston, AL. She was taken to the hospital in Anniston along with the other injured Riders, but the interracial group was not allowed to spend the night.

Moultrie was so badly overcome by the heat and smoke, she says in Freedom Riders, that she could not remember "if I walked or crawled off the bus."

In October 1961, she moved to Philadelphia, PA to attend Cheyney State College. She later received an M.S. in education from Temple University. Moultrie taught school in Delaware from 1964-1990, after which she served as a missionary in Liberia, Mexico, and Canada. Later, she taught Christian education at Sanctuary Christian Academy in Philadelphia.
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, Washington, DC
A 19-year-old Duke University student and part-time secretary in the Washington office of Senator Clair Engle of California, Joan Trumpauer arrived in Jaskcon, MS by train from New Orleans, LA as part of the June 4, 1961 Mississippi Freedom Ride.

The group was promptly ushered by Jackson police to a waiting paddy wagon; all nine Riders refused bail. Trumpauer was transferred to Parchman State Prison Farm.

In her interview for Freedom Riders, she recalls the harrowing conditions at Parchman, which included forced vaginal examinations used as a tactic to humiliate and terrorize female prisoners.

After the Freedom Rides, Trumpauer studied at Tougaloo College and was a Freedom Summer organizer in 1964. She later worked at the Smithsonian with the Community Relations Service and at the Departments of Commerce and Justice before teaching English as a second language at an Arlington, VA elementary school.
Ernest "Rip" Patton, Jr., Nashville, TN

James Peck, Stamford, CT
Radical journalist and pacifist James Peck was the only individual to participate in both the Fellowship of Reconciliation's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation and the 1961 CORE Freedom Ride.

Born into the family of a wealthy clothing wholesaler in 1914, Peck was a social outsider at Choate, an elite Connecticut prep school, in part because his family had only recently converted from Judaism to Episcopalianism. At Harvard he quickly gained a reputation as a campus radical, shocking his classmates by bringing a black date to the freshman dance. Peck dropped out after the end of his freshman year, spending several years as an expatriate in Europe and working as a merchant seaman. Returning to the United States in 1940, Peck devoted himself to organizing work and journalism on behalf of pacifist and social justice causes. He spent almost three years in federal prison during World War II as a conscientious objector.

After his release from prison in 1945, he rededicated himself to pacifism and militant trade unionism. In the late 1940s, Peck became increasingly involved in issues of racial justice, joining the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) as a volunteer.

On May 14, Peck assumed de facto leadership of the 1961 CORE Freedom Ride after James Farmer returned to Washington for his father's funeral. Peck sustained heavy injuries to the face and head during the Ku Klux Klan riot at the Birmingham Trailways Bus Station.

It took more than an hour for Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth to find an ambulance willing to take Peck to the all-white Carraway Methodist Hospital, where staff refused to treat him. Peck was finally able to see a doctor at Jefferson Hillman Hospital, where he received 53 stitches. Undeterred by his injuries, he urged the riders to continue.

"If he could be beaten as he was and still go on, we certainly felt we could go on," says Genevieve Hughes in Freedom Riders.

In 1976, Peck, along with Walter Bergman, filed a lawsuit against the FBI, seeking $100,000 in damages for the lasting injuries he sustained as a result of the riot, in which paid FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. was an active participant. In 1983, he was awarded a partial settlement of $25,000.

James Peck passed away in 1993.
Joseph Perkins, Owensboro, KY
Twenty-seven year-old Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Field Secretary Joe Perkins hailed from Owensboro, KY. The oldest of six children, he spent four years at Kentucky State University in Frankfort before enlisting for two years in the army in 1954. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he demonstrated on behalf of the Southern sit-in movement to end lunch counter segregation. Recruited by CORE in August 1960, he gained a reputation as a bold and skillful organizer.

Perkins was the first member of the original 1961 CORE Freedom Ride to be arrested, for requesting a shoeshine from a whites-only shoeshine chair during an impromptu "shoe-in" in Charlotte, NC on May 9. After two days in a Charlotte jail, he rejoined the group and served as leader of the Greyhound Riders on May 14, when their bus was burned in Anniston, AL.
Charles Person, Atlanta, GA Hank Thomas, Elton, FL
Nineteen-year-old Hank Thomas joined the 1961 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Ride at the last minute after his roommate John Moody dropped out with a bad case of the flu.

"When folks ask me what incident led me to ride," he said years later. "I can't say it was one. When you grow up and face this humiliation every day, there is no one thing. You always felt that way."

Thomas overcame an impoverished childhood in southern Georgia and St. Augustine, FL to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) affiliated Nonviolent Action Group (NAG).

After participating in the May 4 CORE Freedom Ride, Thomas returned to the Deep South to participate in the May 24 Mississippi Freedom Ride from Montgomery, AL to Jackson, MS, and was jailed at Parchman State Prison Farm.

After being released on bail, he went on to participate in the July 14 New Jersey to Arkansas CORE Freedom Ride. On August 22, 1961 Thomas became the first Freedom Rider to appeal his conviction for breach of peace. He was released on appeal, pending payment of a $2000 bond.

Following the Freedom Rides, Thomas served in the Vietnam War, returning home after being wounded in 1966. In recent years, Thomas has owned and operated several hotel and fast food restaurant franchises in the Atlanta metro region.
C.T. Vivian, Chattanooga, TN

Credit: WGBH

A 36-year-old Baptist minister from Howard, MO, the Reverend Cordy "C.T." Vivian was the oldest of the Nashville Riders. A close friend of James Lawson, he had gained the trust of the students involved in the Nashville Movement by participating in the 1960 Nashville sit-in campaign to end lunch counter desegregation. On May 24, 1961, he was arrested in Jackson, MS on the formal charge of breach of peace and imprisoned at Parchman State Prison Farm.

One of the Civil Rights Movement's most respected and revered figures, he was named director of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) affiliates in 1963, and later founded and led several civil rights organizations, including Vision, the National Anti-Klan Network, the Center of Democratic Renewal, and Black Action Strategies and Information Center (BASIC).
Jim Zwerg, Appleton, WI
Jim Zwerg was a 21-year-old exchange student from Beloit College in Wisconsin who became active in the Nashville sit-in movement after attending one of James Lawson's workshops on nonviolence. As one of the two whites selected for the May 17 Nashville Movement Freedom Ride, he expected that he would be targeted for violence as a "race traitor." On May 20, his predictions proved accurate when he was beaten savagely during the riot at the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station, Photographs of a bloodied, beaten Zwerg made headlines around the world.

"We will continue our journey one way or another. We are prepared to die," Zwerg told reporters from his hospital bed in St. Jude's Catholic Hospital. After the Freedom Rides, Zwerg worked as a United Church of Christ minister until 1975. Later, he worked as a personnel manager for IBM and at a hospice in Tucson, AZ, where he later retired. His close friendship with John Lewis is the subject of Ann Bausum's award winning book for young adults, Freedom Riders (1986).

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Meet the Players: Freedom Riders | American Experience | PBS

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Freedom Riders | Article Ralph Abernathy, Montgomery, AL Rev. Ralph Abernathy was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and beyond. As the young pastor of First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Al, he and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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This interview with civil rights leader James Farmer recalls the Freedom Rides of 1961, when an interracial group rode two buses through the South to test enforcement of recent Supreme Court rulings that banned segregated seating on interstate buses and trains. More than 300 Freedom Riders were arrested and jailed before the Interstate Commerce Commission enforced the rulings.

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James Farmer and the Freedom Rides

This interview with civil rights leader James Farmer recalls the Freedom Rides of 1961, when an interracial group rode two buses through the South to test enforcement of recent Supreme Court rulings that banned segregated seating on interstate buses and trains. More than 300 Freedom Riders were arrested and jailed before the Interstate Commerce Commission enforced the rulings.

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This interview with civil rights leader James Farmer recalls the Freedom Rides of 1961, when an interracial group rode two buses through the South to test enforcement of recent Supreme Court rulings that banned segregated seating on interstate buses and trains. More than 300 Freedom Riders were arrested and jailed before the Interstate Commerce Commission enforced the rulings.

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Definition, Summary & Significance | HISTORY

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.

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What did the civil rights movement accomplish?

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What did the civil rights movement accomplish?

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What did the civil rights movement accomplish?

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Glory (From the Motion Picture "Selma") - Common & John Legend

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination:

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Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination:

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Photographers working for the Farm Security Administration Historical Section (later transferred to the Office of War Information) were encouraged to document continuity and change in many aspects of life in America during the years the unit was in operation. They were particularly encouraged to photograph billboards and signs as one indicator of such developments. Although no documentation has been found to indicate that photographers were explicitly encouraged to photograph racial discrimination signs, the collection includes a significant number of this type of image, which is rarely found in other Prints and Photographs Division collections.

This reference aid includes all the known images of discrimination signs found in the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information file of photographic prints. This list was compiled in response to frequent patron requests for such images. The list is updated as additional images are discovered.

Photographic copies of the images may be ordered through the Library of Congress Duplication Services (202-707-5640). When placing orders, the reproduction number should be cited.

The Library of Congress is unaware of any restrictions on the use of the images. For further information, see the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information/Office of Emergency Management Collection Rights and Restrictions information.

Note: The following captions are transcribed from the original caption strips.

4) Durham, North Carolina. May 1940.
Jack Delano, photographer.
"At the bus station."
Location: E-5153
Reproduction Number: LC-USF33-20522-M2
[ view catalog record]

14) Manchester, Georgia. May 1938.
John Vachon, photographer. "A railroad station." [Signs: "Colored Waiting Room" and "Colored Men."]
Location: E-5203
Reproduction Number: LC-USF33-1172-M4
[ view catalog record]

17) Durham, North Carolina. May 1940.
Jack Delano, photographer.
"A cafe near the tobacco market." [Signs: Separate doors for "White" and for "Colored."]
Location: E-9064
Reproduction Number: LC-USF33-20513-M2
[ view catalog record]

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Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination: Documentation by Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photographers

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Photographers working for the Farm Security Administration Historical Section (later transferred to the Office of War Information) were encouraged to document continuity and change in many aspects of life in America during the years the unit was in operation. They were particularly encouraged to photograph billboards and signs as one indicator of such developments.

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John Lewis and Andrew Aydin | March: Book 1

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John Lewis and Andrew Aydin | March: Book 1

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Episode: John Lewis and Andrew Aydin | March: Book 1

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Congressman John Lewis is one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, and receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.

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What was it like growing up in Alabama under Jim Crow?

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What was it like growing up in Alabama under Jim Crow?

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What was it like growing up in Alabama under Jim Crow?

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John Lewis - Civil Rights Leader Video - Civil Rights Movement - HISTORY.com

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Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis joined the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Lewis was a Freedom Rider, spoke at 1963's March on Washington and led the demonstration that became known as

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Freedom Riders | Article

The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. "Whites Only" and "Colored" signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order.

Signs such as "Colored Waiting Room" constantly reminded travelers of the enforced racial order. Credit: Library of Congress

In legal theory, blacks received "separate but equal" treatment under the law - in actuality, public facilities for blacks were nearly always inferior to those for whites, when they existed at all. In addition, blacks were systematically denied the right to vote in most of the rural South through the selective application of literacy tests and other racially motivated criteria.

Sign at a Greyhound Bus Station in Rome, GA. Credit: Library of Congress

The Jim Crow system was upheld by local government officials and reinforced by acts of terror perpetrated by Vigilantes. In 1896, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of separate but equal in Plessy v. Ferguson, after a black man in New Orleans attempted to sit in a whites-only railway car.

In 1908, journalist Ray Stannard Baker observed that "no other point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among Negroes as the Jim Crow car." As bus travel became widespread in the South over the first half of the 20th century, it followed the same pattern.

"Travel in the segregated South for black people was humiliating," recalled Diane Nash in her interview for Freedom Riders. "The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use the public facilities that white people used."

Transit was a core component of segregation in the South, as the 1947 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) pamphlet and Bayard Rustin song, "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow" attests. Keeping whites and blacks from sitting together on a bus, train, or trolley car might seem insignificant, but it was one more link in a system of segregation that had to be defended at all times - lest it collapse. Thus transit was a logical point of attack for the foes of segregation, in the courtroom and on the buses themselves.

It would take several decades of legal action and months of nonviolent direct action before these efforts achieved their intended result.

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Jim Crow Laws | American Experience | PBS

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Freedom Riders | Article The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants.

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This interview with civil rights activist Rosa Parks describes her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her refusal sparked a massive bus boycott that lasted 381 days, ending on December 21, 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on city buses was unconstitutional.

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Rosa Parks

This interview with civil rights activist Rosa Parks describes her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her refusal sparked a massive bus boycott that lasted 381 days, ending on December 21, 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on city buses was unconstitutional.

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This interview with civil rights activist Rosa Parks describes her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

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Birth of the Civil Rights Movement, 1941-1954.pdf

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Miriam McClendon was 14 years old when she became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama. In this video segment, McClendon describes how she left school to participate in the Children's Crusade of 1963 and was then arrested and jailed for several days.

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Miriam McClendon

Miriam McClendon was 14 years old when she became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama. In this video segment, McClendon describes how she left school to participate in the Children's Crusade of 1963 and was then arrested and jailed for several days.

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Miriam McClendon was 14 years old when she became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama. In this video segment, McClendon describes how she left school to participate in the Children's Crusade of 1963 and was then arrested and jailed for several days.

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Selma to Montgomery March Video - Civil Rights Movement - HISTORY.com

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Newsreel footage of the freedom march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Meet the Players: Movement Leaders | American Experience | PBS

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Meet the movement leaders featured in Freedom Riders.

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Freedom Riders | Article

Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor yells at a photojournalist. Credit: Birmingham News

The Freedom Rides were successful in large part because they were able to engage the media and gain a sympathetic national audience. A handful of reporters and photographers from the black press and one freelance writer affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) accompanied the Riders on the buses during CORE's original May 4 Freedom Ride. Other than these journalists, initial news coverage of the Rides was mixed or strongly negative. Early news accounts criticized "extremists on both sides," equating civil rights activists with their segregationist opposition. Other editorials characterized the Freedom Riders as "outside agitators," meddling in communities to which they did not belong - although many of the African-American Riders had been raised in the South.

The images and eyewitness accounts of May 14, 1961 changed the country's consciousness. Footage of a burning bus in Anniston, AL shocked the nation, as did photographs of the beatings inflicted during the riot at the Birmingham Trailways Bus Station and of the bandaged face of Freedom Rider James Peck lying in a hospital bed. These pictures were unlike anything that Americans had seen previously. Images brought home the brutality of the white segregationist regime in a way that words alone could not convey. Klan members attacked Birmingham Post-Herald photographer Tommy Langston along with other members of the media and attempted to destroy their film; miraculously, the roll of film inside Langston's smashed camera survived intact.

A headline the day after the Greyhound bus burning outside Anniston, AL. Credit: Amsterdam News

Similarly, the impassioned eyewitness account of Howard K. Smith, a native Southerner who had traveled to Birmingham to investigate allegations of lawlessness and racial intimidation from a neutral perspective helped shift public opinion. Just a few hours after the riot, he delivered his report over the national CBS radio network. Smith described a scene where "one passenger was knocked down at my feet by twelve of the hoodlums and his face was beaten and kicked until it was a bloody pulp." In the end, Smith abandoned journalistic objectivity, warning of "a dangerous confusion in the Southern mind" while calling for legal change and presidential action to improve the situation.

While accounts of the Freedom Rides in the white Southern press remained sharply negative and mocking, national media coverage became more favorable in the days that followed. Jim Peck gave an interview on NBC's Today Show. The June 2, 1961 issue of Time magazine featured the Freedom Rides as its cover story and was openly sympathetic in its coverage. Life magazine also chose the Freedom Riders as its "story of the week" for the June 2 issue, including powerful images from the siege of the First Baptist Church.

News reporters and photographers accompanied the Freedom Riders through most of the Rides' key events, from the May 21 riot and threatened mob violence in Montgomery, AL all the way to the tense National Guard escort through Mississippi on May 24 and the breach of peace arrests that followed upon the Freedom Riders' arrival in Jackson. Movement leaders of the 1960s quickly absorbed the Freedom Riders' example; the most effective and best-remembered campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement were those where the news media captured iconic images that the nation found impossible to ignore.

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The Power of the Press | American Experience | PBS

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Freedom Riders | Article The Freedom Rides were successful in large part because they were able to engage the media and gain a sympathetic national audience. A handful of reporters and photographers from the black press and one freelance writer affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) accompanied the Riders on the buses during CORE's original May 4 Freedom Ride.

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What Came Next | American Experience | PBS

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The Freedom Rides represented a major evolution in the tactics and strategy of the Civil Rights Movement and marked an unprecedented level of engagement with the federal government.

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How and why did you first get involved in the civil rights movement?

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How and why did you first get involved in the civil rights movement?

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John Lewis perspective

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How and why did you first get involved in the civil rights movement?

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AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Freedom Riders: The Inspiration

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Democracy in Action | American Experience | PBS

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The Freedom Rides brought together people of different races, religions, cultures, and economic backgrounds from across the United States.

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AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Freedom Riders: The Tactic

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During the Civil Rights Movement, black civil rights activists often risked their lives to promote racial equality. Colonel Stone Johnson, shown in this interview, was among those who offered protection and tried to prevent violence against African Americans, which ranged from beatings to bombings.

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Colonel Stone Johnson

During the Civil Rights Movement, black civil rights activists often risked their lives to promote racial equality. Colonel Stone Johnson, shown in this interview, was among those who offered protection and tried to prevent violence against African Americans, which ranged from beatings to bombings.

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During the Civil Rights Movement, black civil rights activists often risked their lives to promote racial equality. Colonel Stone Johnson, shown in this interview, was among those who offered protection and tried to prevent violence against African Americans, which ranged from beatings to bombings.

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AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Freedom Riders: The Pioneers

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President John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Address

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President John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Address

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President John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Address

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Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream Speech - August 28, 1963

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Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream Speech - August 28, 1963

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Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream Speech - August 28, 1963

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Sheyann Webb was eight years old and a third-grader when she put on her "marching shoes." As she walked to school one morning in January 1965 she happened on a meeting at the Brown Chapel AME Church that changed the direction of her days for the next few months. She stopped and stared across the street at the unusual bustle in front of the church on a weekday morning. People were gathered, talking in small groups, cars were parked in front and more cars were pulling up. Most surprising of all, some of the people clustered on the church steps were white. Something strange was going on. Sheyann was already late but she felt herself drawn across the street, up the steps and into the back of the church.

Once inside Sheyann sat in a back pew and listened to Hosea Williams, an aide to Martin Luther King, speaking to the crowd. The words that stayed with Sheyann were, "If you can't vote, then you're not free; and if you ain't free, children, then you're a slave." Sheyann couldn't stop thinking about that. She knew her great, great grandmommas had been slaves and she knew her parents didn't vote. Sheyann was hours late for school. When she arrived, her teacher reprimanded her in front of her classmates both for her tardiness and for getting involved with the dangerous goings-on at Brown Chapel.

Sheyann stopped going to school that day. She became the only child to regularly attend daytime meetings at Brown Chapel. She went to rallies and marches. She talked her best friend, Rachel West, into going with her, though only after school. She argued with her parents. She questioned her mother, "Why are we second-class citizens? Why can't we vote? Why, why, why?" Sheyann badgered her parents day after day. Sometimes her father got up and walked out of the room. Her mother listened, tried to answer her questions and considered long and hard what Sheyann was saying. Sheyann's mother also explained some reality to her. Trying to register could cost Sheyann's parents their jobs or get them kicked out of public housing. And Sheyann was facing a worse possibility. Going to demonstrations could get you hurt or even killed. Her mother told her that four little girls in Birmingham, about her age, had died in a church bombing. From the beginning Sheyann understood the danger in her actions and she was often afraid.

Hosea Williams asked Sheyann if she could sing. Soon she was up front leading hundreds of people singing Freedom Songs, like "Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom" and "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round." Rachel started singing with her. Sheyann's parents came to Brown Chapel in the evenings to hear her sing, but they would not march or register.

Sheyann and Rachel became special friends of Dr. King's. He often played a game with them, asking, "What do you want?" They would reply, "Freedom." Dr. King would say, "I can't hear you," and they would say "Freedom," louder and louder until they were all shouting and all three were laughing. One day Dr. King asked them, "Do you young ladies have your marching shoes on?" They looked down at their feet uncertainly. Rachel lifted one shoe to show him. Each girl had only one pair of shoes. "They'll do," Dr. King said, "They're just fine."

Sheyann took part in many marches. She saw people all around her beaten, hit with clubs, shocked with cattle prods. She held tight to the hand of an adult marcher, Margaret Moore. She sang to gain courage; she prayed, but the fear haunted her dreams by night and her talks with Rachel by day. She was especially afraid of the horses the mounted police would ride into the crowd. Stronger than her fear were her conviction and determination. And she saw change in those around her. She witnessed the teachers march and saw her own teacher, Mrs. Bright, among the marchers. She saw her mother's mix of fear and admiration when they talked. She overheard her mother defending her to her father when she was skipping school.

One night Sheyann stayed up late to polish her father's shoes. She rubbed until her arm was sore and the worn leather showed her blurred reflection. A few days later her mother asked what she would like for her birthday on February 17. Her answer was swift and sure: "Register." The next morning when Sheyann came downstairs for breakfast, both her parents were sitting in the kitchen. This was strange; her father had usually left for work before she was up. "Shey, you're getting your birthday present a day early," her Momma said. Shey walked between them and held their hands as they joined the long line to register. They stayed in line all day. White passersby sprayed Raid and disinfectant at them and held their noses. The courthouse closed before they reached the doors. They went home disappointed but not defeated. Their decision was made and Shey's parents did finally register to vote.

Sheyann Webb marched twice across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the marches from Selma to Montgomery. The first time she was gassed and driven back with others, but the second time she crossed the bridge, triumphant. Dr. King sent the girls back to Selma from the Montgomery road, telling them they had marched enough. Sheyann told him, "My feet and legs may be tired, but my soul still feels like marchin'," as she boarded a bus to return home.

Two people Sheyann knew and loved died in the struggle: Jonathan Daniels, a young white seminarian from New Hampshire who lived with Rachel's family; and of course, her beloved Dr. King. Others who marched with her were killed, and most, Sheyann included, were insulted, threatened, gassed, beaten, or jailed. Sheyann registered to vote on her 18th birthday.

Related Resource:

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Sheyann Webb: A Story for First Grade - Civil Rights Teaching

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Sheyann Webb was eight years old and a third-grader when she put on her "marching shoes." As she walked to school one morning in January 1965 she happened on a meeting at the Brown Chapel AME Church that changed the direction of her days for the next few months.

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In this interview, civil-rights leader Diane Nash recalls her role in the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, the 1961 Freedom Rides, and the 1965 voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama. As one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Nash mobilized her fellow college students to confront segregation and discrimination with nonviolent direct action.

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Diane Nash and the Sit-Ins

In this interview, civil-rights leader Diane Nash recalls her role in the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, the 1961 Freedom Rides, and the 1965 voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama. As one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Nash mobilized her fellow college students to confront segregation and discrimination with nonviolent direct action. This resource is part of the Civil Rights collection.

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In this interview, civil-rights leader Diane Nash recalls her role in the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, the 1961 Freedom Rides, and the 1965 voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama. As one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Nash mobilized her fellow college students to confront segregation and discrimination with nonviolent direct action.

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In the 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama's strict segregation laws, andviolence against blacks, inspired whites like Eileen Walbert, shown inthis interview, to form the Concerned White Citizens of Alabama. Walbertand other sympathetic whites participated in demonstrations for racialequality. Like many civil rights activists, they too suffered reprisals.

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Eileen Kelley Walbert

In the 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama's strict segregation laws, andviolence against blacks, inspired whites like Eileen Walbert, shown inthis interview, to form the Concerned White Citizens of Alabama. Walbertand other sympathetic whites participated in demonstrations for racialequality. Like many civil rights activists, they too suffered reprisals.

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In the 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama's strict segregation laws, andviolence against blacks, inspired whites like Eileen Walbert, shown inthis interview, to form the Concerned White Citizens of Alabama. Walbertand other sympathetic whites participated in demonstrations for racialequality. Like many civil rights activists, they too suffered reprisals.

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In what ways was black life under Jim Crow similar to life under slavery?

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In what ways was black life under Jim Crow similar to life under slavery?

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In what ways was black life under Jim Crow similar to life under slavery?

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How did black Southerners resist Jim Crow?

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How did black Southerners resist Jim Crow?

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How did black Southerners resist Jim Crow?

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How successful was the civil rights movement?

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How successful was the civil rights movement?

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How successful was the civil rights movement?

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On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This single act of nonviolent resistance sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, an eleven-month struggle to desegregate the city’s buses. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., the boycott resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that public bus segregation is unconstitutional and catapulted both King and Parks into the national spotlight.