Journey of Reconciliation
| Journey of Reconciliation | |||
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| Date | April 9–23, 1947 | ||
| Location | |||
| Resulted in | Inconclusive | ||
| Parties | |||
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| Lead figures | |||
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| Casualties and losses | |||
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The Journey of Reconciliation was a form of nonviolent direct action to challenge state segregation laws on interstate buses in the Southern United States.[1] The two-week journey by 16 men began on April 9, 1947. It was seen as inspiring the later Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights Movement from May 1961 onward. James Peck, one of the white participants, also took part in the Freedom Ride of May 1961.
History
Sixteen men from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) took part, eight white and eight black, including the organizers, white Methodist minister George Houser of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and CORE and black Quaker Bayard Rustin of FOR and the American Friends Service Committee.[2] The other black participants were Chicago musician Dennis Banks; Andrew Johnson, a student from Cincinnati; New York attorney Conrad Lynn; Wallace Nelson, a freelance lecturer; Eugene Stanley of North Carolina A&T College; William Worthy of the New York Council for a Permanent FEPC; and Nathan Wright, a church social worker from Cincinnati. The other white participants were North Carolina ministers Louis Adams and Ernest Bromley; Joseph Felmet of the Southern Workers Defense League; Homer Jack, executive secretary of the Chicago Council Against Racial and Religious Discrimination; James Peck, editor of the Workers Defense League News Bulletin; Worth Randle, a Cincinnati biologist; and radical pacifist Igal Roodenko.[3]
The participants planned to ride public transportation in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, all with segregated systems. During the two-week trip, blacks sat in front, whites in back, or sometimes side-by-side, all in violation of current state laws which required passengers to practice segregated seating in buses.
They were supported by the recent 1946 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946), which prohibited segregation in interstate travel as unconstitutional, by putting "an undue burden on commerce." The Southern states were refusing to enforce the Court's decision. Based on consultation, the protesters limited their direct action to the Upper South, where the risk of violence was not as high as in the Deep South.[4]
The riders suffered several arrests, notably in North Carolina. Judge Henry Whitfield expressed his distaste for the white men involved:
"It's about time you Jews from New York learned that you can't come down here bringing your niggers with you to upset the customs of the South. Just to teach you a lesson, I gave your black boys thirty days [on a chain gang], and I give you ninety."[This quote needs a citation]
The NAACP and Thurgood Marshall had reservations about the use of direct action, expecting to provoke much violence with little progress toward civil rights. The NAACP did offer a limited amount of legal help for those arrested. Bayard Rustin believed that the Journey of Reconciliation, as well as other actions challenging segregation in these years, contributed to the eventual ruling of the US Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. It ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional and ordered them ended.[1]
See also
- Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1953)
- Boynton v. Virginia (1960)
References
- ^ a b "The First Freedom Ride: Bayard Rustin On His Work With CORE". History Matters. Retrieved April 29, 2008.
- ^ Meier, August; Rudwick, Elliott (1969). "The First Freedom Ride". Phylon. 30 (3): 213–222. JSTOR 273469.
- ^ Bayard Rustin and George Houser (1947), "We Challenged Jim Crow", a report prepared for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Fellowship of Reconciliation; published in Fellowship, April 1947. Reprinted from Down the Line, the collected writings of Bayard Rustin, Quadrangle Books, 1971. Retrieved from SouthernHistory.net, March 12, 2012.
- ^ Robin Washington, "The History behind 'You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow!' ", New Hampshire Public Television, 1995, accessed April 26, 2010
Bibliography
- Raymond Arsenault (2006). Freedom Riders:1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice: Pivotal Moments in American History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199755813.
External links
- PBS documentary on Journey of Reconciliation
- “The First Freedom Ride:” Bayard Rustin On His Work With CORE , Columbia University Oral History Collection, George Mason University