I watched the Freedom Riders documentary on PBS last night and was stunned into silence at the courage I saw. It was just a part of the over all Civil Rights Movement but an important part nonetheless. The premise sounds simple enough; ride a bus through the segregated south and see if recent Supreme Court decisions striking down discrimination in interstate travel are being adhered to. The answer is they are not. Each state in the south is disregarding the new rulings.
The documentary did not demonize all white southerners and pointed out white folks from all walks of life also participated in the rides. It is easy for us living in 2011 to look back and judge the whites participating in the verbal abuse, beatings and assaults and wonder just what in the hell were they thinking? Now, they look like a bunch of redneck, inbred monsters. Change scares the shit out of people; let's not forget that. If the change is being imposed from so-called outsiders (people from the north and the Federal Government), it is even worse. As a conflict practitioner, I have to ask what caused such a violent backlash? This kind of response does not happen in a vacuum. So on one side (for lack of a better word) there are white southerners who see their way of life being threatened, competition for jobs, loss of long standing power and control, disruption of norms and plain old fear of the unknown. The Freedom riders were members of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and they wanted equal protection under the law and equality here in the United States. The Freedom Riders practiced non-violence and never carried weapons. Their goal was to travel in peace via the nation's bus system and bring attention to the injustices of segregation. It seems to me watching the film, they underestimated the hatred and the level of violence they would come to face.
Fifty years later we can look back and speculate if there was a better way to get the desired result. Could more have been done to alleviate the fears of the white people? I doubt they would have been open to cultural sensitivity training! Could something less "In your face" than Freedom Rides done the trick? To paraphrase Malcolm X who can set a timetable for another man's freedom? I cannot.
I think the key to the success of the Freedom Riders is sticking to non-violence. Had blacks and whites got into a tit for tat cycle of assaults and killings, progress toward equality would have been much slower. There would be much more fear and distrust that would have taken many decades to heal. Think about non-violence for a moment or two. It seems we seldom do these days. You are willing to go unarmed into a place you are NOT welcome and risk getting your ass kicked, arrested or even killed. The courage part comes in after some of these things have happened and you decide to continue in the face of violence. People can some be a mix of good and bad. I think, for the most part, people are GOOD. Given the chance people will do the right thing most of the time. Under the right circumstances, we can also do terrible things. For example, when there is no accountability, such as when the police hold back while a mob attacks non-violent activists, our darker side emerges. Combine the no accountability with fear driven hatred and things can get very bad very fast. Please correct me if I missed something but no freedom riders were killed. That is a small miracle given the situation. Other Civil Rights workers did lose their lives. They brought much needed attention to the injustices of segregation. Enough people saw what was going on through a well functioning free press, and demand segregation be brought to an end. It is never an easy undertaking to meet violence with non-violence. I think it is important to recognize the courage it takes.
For further reading check out these sites:
History of the Civil Rights Movement
http://www.america.gov/publications/books-content/free-at-last.html
Rep. John Lewis
http://johnlewis.house.gov/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org/
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