Freedom Rides to the Civil Rights Act 1964
Freedom Rides 1961
In May 1961, teams of Black and white activists known as Freedom Riders boarded interstate buses heading into the Deep South to challenge segregated bus terminals. The Supreme Court had ruled such segregation illegal in Boynton v Virginia (1960), but the ruling was being ignored. In Anniston, Alabama, a mob firebombed one bus; in Birmingham and Montgomery, riders were beaten. Attorney General Robert Kennedy negotiated a compromise, and the Interstate Commerce Commission eventually enforced desegregation of terminals. The Freedom Rides showed that non-violent protest could provoke violent responses that brought federal pressure.
In May 1961, Freedom Riders rode interstate buses into the South to challenge segregated terminals. Violent mob attacks in Anniston and Birmingham drew national and international attention. The Interstate Commerce Commission eventually enforced desegregation of bus and train terminals.
Birmingham 1963 and the Federal Response
In April 1963, King and the SCLC launched a campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, deliberately chosen because its police commissioner, Bull Connor, was known for his willingness to use force against protesters. The strategy was to provoke a violent response that would be seen on television. Connor obliged: fire hoses and police dogs were turned on marchers, including children. Images were broadcast worldwide. President Kennedy, who had been cautious on civil rights, called the scenes “shameful” and announced he would introduce civil rights legislation. In June 1963 civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his home in Mississippi — yet another shock that drove the issue to the top of the political agenda.
On 28 August 1963, approximately 250,000 people marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC in the largest political demonstration America had ever seen. It was a coalition event — organised by labour leader A. Philip Randolph and coordinated by the major civil rights organisations. King delivered his speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, including the passage that became the most quoted in American history. Kennedy met the march’s leaders afterwards. Less than three months later, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on 22 November 1963.
Kennedy, Johnson and the Civil Rights Act 1964
Kennedy’s record on civil rights was reluctant until 1963. He needed Southern Democrats’ support for other legislation and avoided pushing civil rights bills until Birmingham forced his hand. Lyndon B. Johnson, who took over after Kennedy’s assassination, had far greater skill in managing Congress. He used the nation’s grief and his mastery of Senate procedure to push the Civil Rights Act through. Signed on 2 July 1964, the Civil Rights Act 1964 banned racial discrimination in hotels, restaurants, cinemas and other public places, and in employment. Title VII created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The Civil Rights Act did not address voting rights. In early 1965, the SCLC and SNCC organised marches in Selma, Alabama, to demand voting rights legislation. On ‘Bloody Sunday,’ 7 March 1965, state troopers attacked marchers with clubs and tear gas on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Television networks broke into their evening schedules that night to show the film. The outrage drove Johnson to address Congress in person, using the movement’s own words: “We shall overcome.” The Voting Rights Act, signed on 6 August 1965, banned literacy tests and provided for federal supervision of elections in states where Black voters had been systematically excluded. It transformed voter registration in the South.
Kennedy was cautious on civil rights until Birmingham (1963) and only introduced legislation under pressure. Johnson, a skilled Senate operator who needed no Southern coalition, used Kennedy’s assassination and his congressional mastery to push the Civil Rights Act into law in July 1964 — a legislative achievement Kennedy had not been able to secure.
Opposition to the Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement faced organised and sometimes violent opposition at every stage. State authorities throughout the South used legal tools — injunctions against marches, arrests on technical charges, economic pressure on Black employers and landlords — to slow the movement. The Ku Klux Klan and related groups provided the violent edge: the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed by Klan members in September 1963, killing four Black girls. Three civil rights workers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — were murdered in Mississippi in June 1964 during the Freedom Summer voter registration drive, with local law enforcement complicit. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was reluctant to investigate these crimes and preferred to monitor the civil rights movement as a potential Communist subversion. Understanding that the movement achieved what it did against this level of organised opposition helps explain why the legislative victories of 1964 and 1965 were so significant.