As white and Negro Freedom Riders
continued their rolling assault against segregation last week, they
produced some profound results in South and North alike: In Washington, Attorney General Robert Kennedy urged the Interstate
Commerce Commission to start enforcing the vaguely worded federal ban
on segregation in restaurants, waiting rooms and toilets at interstate
bus terminals. The ICC in 1955 outlawed segregated seating in
interstate buses. But that rule is rarely obeyed in the South, and the
ICC has acted against only one offending bus line, which was fined
$100. In Chicago, Greyhound Bus Lines said that it will enforce
nonsegregation in its stations throughout the land. Two signs were
promptly removed from entrances to two separate waiting rooms in the
Greyhound station at Montgomery, Ala. One sign had read, “Colored
Intrastate Passengers.” and the other, “White Intrastate Passengers.”
The Trailways bus system said that it had also agreed to a policy of
nonsegregation. And whites and Negroes ate peacefully side by side at
the Trailways station lunch counter in Montgomery. Just a week before,
eleven Freedom Riders had been jailed for trying to do the same thing. In Jackson. Miss., the number of Freedom Riders held on breach of
peace charges swelled to 53—most of the 13 whites in the city jail,
most of the 40 Negroes in the county jail across the street. As the
Freedom Riders spent the time praying, singing and discussing the
philosophy of peaceful resistance, Jackson officials strove to present
a picture of sweet reasonableness, gladhanded the visiting press at
frequent parties. At week's end, the jailed Freedom Riders began a
hunger strike. In Montgomery. Ala., U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr.. a
native Alabaman, cracked down hard on both sides. He issued a temporary
order restraining four Freedom Rider organizations and five Negro
ministers from “sponsoring,
financing, assisting or encouraging” any future test rides. At the same
time, heeding a Justice Department request, he ordered the Montgomery
police to protect Freedom Riders against further beatings, and enjoined
some local Ku Klux Klanners from trying to halt or maul the riders.
Warned the judge: “If there are any such incidents as this [mob
violence] again, I am going to put some Klansmen, some city officials,
some city policemen and some Negro preachers in the federal
penitentiary.” The riders were unmoved. Said Dr. King: “Certainly the
Freedom Rides will continue.”
