They set out to defy Jim Crow laws and call for change, and predictably were met by hatred and violence, with attacks on the bus depots themselves in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama.  Much of it passively supported by the local police, who often refused to intervene. But the Freedom Riders understood their success transformed the civil rights movement. Their strategy was the same as the first Journey of Reconciliation: an interracial group would board buses destined for the South. The whites would sit in the back and the blacks in the front. At rest stops, the whites would go into blacks-only areas and vice versa.

On this day, May 4, 1961. The Freedom Ride left Washington DC. It was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17, the seventh anniversary of the Brown vs Board of Education decision that affirmed the illegality of segregation.

The riders unfortunately never made it anywhere near Louisiana. The first expedition was met by extreme violence in Alabama: the bus was attacked, its tires slashed. A little down the road, when they stopped for repairs, the bus was firebombed. The second of the two buses did little better – a crowd surrounded it, and waited the passengers out. Many who exited were beaten; some brutally. An ad hoc continuation formed out of Tennessee met the same fate: more brutal attacks, more beatings. The extreme violence forced President Kennedy to step in with federal troops. It was another chink from the wall of racism.