Civil Rights Movement Milestones

Civil Rights Movement Milestones

Civil Rights Movement Milestones. Fifty years ago this month, a group of activists called the Freedom Riders rode buses through the South to try to thwart segregation, but they faced violent consequences. Here’s a look at those riders and at other pivotal moments in the civil rights movement.

178 former Freedom Riders on Oprah Winfrey Show

178 former Freedom Riders on Oprah Winfrey Show

178 former Freedom Riders on Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah Winfrey is marking the 50th anniversary of the first Freedom Ride.
Harpo Productions says 178 former Freedom Riders will be on Wednesday's episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in one of the largest gatherings of Freedom Riders since 1961. The riders peacefully opposed 1960s racial segregation of the South.

Winfrey says she owes "a deep debt of gratitude" to the Freedom Riders. She says she knows her "life would be different were it not for them."

Freedom Riders

Freedom Riders

Freedom riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (of 1960). The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.

Boynton v. Virginia had outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel, but the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling, and thus Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.