American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Raymond Arsenault, 1 of 5

[Interviewer] So Ray, the first question I'm I'm going to ask is is is about the Irene Morgan story. And and And um I guess just tell me you know the Irene Morgan story and and and what happened and and how that changed the law. [Arsenault] Well [Arsenault] Irene Morgan was a young woman, 27, 28 years old lived in Baltimore, she worked in a B-26 bomber factory. Her husband was a stevedore who worked on the docks in Baltimore. Neither one had a high school education but they both had a strong sense of themselves, sh- she was uh really as it turned out an amazing young woman, and and she had two children, she had a third pregnancy which she lost in a miscarriage and she went back to Virginia to stay a couple weeks with her mother, Gloucester County in the Virginia tidewater, kind of the old slave-haunted tobacco region of the Virginia tidewater. And uh But she had to get back to Baltimore eventually to go back to work, help support her family, and she boarded a bus in July of 1944 probably thinking mostly

about getting back to her children and to her husband and wasn't really thinking, I think, about where she sat on the bus and she sat in the white section. It was an interstate bus and I think she knew enough to realize that uh she could at least make the argument that Virginia segregation law shouldn't apply to her. So when the bus driver bartender barked at her to move to the back she said no. And uh they eventually called the sheriff's deputies and they dragged her off the bus. She fought them, um she was still a little weak I think from her miscarriage and actually when I when I interviewed her she--um [Interviewer] Okay, let's cut. let's cut [Arsenault] You probably don't want that much detail. [Interviewer] yeah that's like way too much and we are rolling, Okay um Irene Morgan. [Arsenault] Well the Freedom Rides of 1961 were not really the first Freedom Rides. First time they used the term but the actual first Freedom Ride was the so-called Journey of Reconciliation which uh took place in April of 1947 and it it followed a famous Supreme Court case, Morgan vs. Virginia. Irene Morgan was a young black woman from Baltimore who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Gloucester

County, Virginia. uh They put her in jail for a while, she represented herself in the lower courts, eventually Thurgood Marshall took her case all the way to the Supreme Court and amazingly they won. Really only the second victory that Marshall had won before the Supreme Court and uh I think maybe a bit naively he and the other leaders thought that maybe actually they would de-segregate the interstate transportation on buses and trains, but of course it didn't happen. The attorneys general in the south simply ignored the the decision, the politicians just came up with all kinds of subterfuges to argue that it didn't really apply to them, that it was only Virginia, and it was very frustrating for the NAACP and after a few months of trying various legal remedies they essentially gave up for the time being and went on to other issues, I mean they had school desegregation and housing discrimination, all those other things, to take, employment discrimination, to take care of and that provided an opening for the radical wing of the civil rights movement, people who were involved with uh non-violent direct action

the Congress of Racial Equality, which had been founded in Chicago in 1942, had never really done anything in the south. um They had had some a few sit-ins. [Interviewer] ok Let's cut. I'm sorry I'm sorry to interrupt, but-- [Arsenault] No, it's-- [Interviewer] Okay, we are rolling give me the Irene Morgan story but relate it to its relation to the Freedom Rides of 1961. [Arsenault] Ok well Almost certainly there wouldn't've been the Freedom Rides without Irene Morgan, a young black woman in her late twenties from Baltimore. um She refused to give up her seat on a bus in Gloucester County, Virginia in July of 1944, um same week actually that Jackie Robinson was refusing to give up his seat on the back of a bus near Fort Hood, Texas and he was court marshaled. He eventually won his case, and so did Irene Morgan, she took her case with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP's help all the way to the Supreme Court and the Morgan vs. Virginia in June of 1946. The NAACP, on paper at least, um struck down segregation in interstate travel on buses and by implication trains. [Interviewer] Okay. um

So you say the south didn't change much, there there wa- there's still after this thing gets passed, there's there's no real change in in in interstate bus travel for for for African-Americans in the south? [Arsenault] There's virtually no change after the Morgan decision. The attorneys general in the south just ignored the the order from the court, the Truman administration was not in any real position or of a of a mindset to enforce it at that point, the politicians came up with all kinds of excuses why it didn't apply to their state. The They would claim that it was it was it was a- excuse me the segregation um came from the bus company rules, the bus companies would say "well it came from state law," if you you know if you wanted to change A, they'd say B, if you say B, they'd go to A, but they found ways of of of ignoring of voiding the decision. It was very frustrating for the NAACP. [Interviewer] Um ok. That that kind of led into something that I was going to ad- ask in a second. Talk a little about Greyhound

and Trailways policy at that time towards black riders. I I I What I'm trying to get at here is that you know they were complicit in this up to that point right, because that kind of leads later on to the ICC's decision, and but I don't want to talk about that now. But talk about Greyhound and Trailways' um attitude toward black riders. [Arsenault] Well both Greyhound and Trailways were were national companies and they had southern affiliates. And they basically let the southern affiliates do what they wanted to do in terms of segregation. It was complicated because you had interstate buses going across state lines and it was always a bit embarrassing to try to enforce the rules once you've crossed the Mason-Dixon line um and they I think they took the easy way out and basically tried to enforce as much segregation as possible. I'm not sure that the corporate executives at Greyhound and Trailways had any large stake in segregation except they wanted the keep the buses rolling and they they essentially said that they had no choice, it was state law, and nothing they could do about it and they just didn't talk about it and didn't want to deal

with it in those years. [Interviewer] Great. um I want to talk a little about the Journey of Reconciliation. um uh Talk a little about the Freedom Rides based on the Journey of Reconciliation. um and And give me again the short version of this, um can we cut for a sec? um Okay, so talk a little about the the Journey of Reconciliation as the predecessor of the Freedom Rides. [Arsenault] Well the first Freedom Ride was the Journey of Reconciliation in April of 1947 actually the same week that Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball which is one the reasons why they didn't get very much press coverage. They left from Washington, there were 16 of them, 8 blacks and 8 whites, they they limited their travel to the upper south, it was only in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. um They didn't really meet much resistance, people essentially ignored them, uh they they didn't get injured for the most part, um they didn't get arrested, although 4 of them were arrested in Chapel Hill and they spent 22 days on the chain gang, including Bayard Rustin, the famous Gandhian sage who came up with the

idea for the Journey of Reconciliation in the first place. I think they thought this would be the first of many freedom rides, they didn't use that term, but first of many Journeys of Reconciliation but actually the Cold War intervened and most of them had to go underground essentially to survive. And they really didn't were in no position to mount any additional nonviolent direct action campaigns for for many years. [Interviewer] What what what did the Journey of Reconciliation accomplish? [Arsenault] I think it accomplished-- it set a-- I think the Journey of Reconciliation set a model uh that you took the struggle out of the courtroom and into the streets. It only lasted two weeks but they showed that you could go into the south, at least the upper south, and survive, that you could flout the segregation laws and you wouldn't be killed by the Ku Klux Klan. So it, I think it set uh an example for for future nonviolent soldiers, if you will, but the fact that they weren't able to do it again also

reinforced the message that the south was largely off-limits to non-violent direct action during the early 1950s, at least. [Interviewer] Why weren't they able to do it again? [Arsenault] Well C C CORE was a-- [Interviewer] Okay I think that's it, let's cut. [Arsenault] Yeah, it would be a lot about how CORE. [Interviewer] So um again, the the the the short version of of the Journey of Reconciliation. [Arsenault] Ok. Well following the Morgan decision the Congress of Racial Equality sponsored a two-week trip through the upper south. They had they were on two buses, Trailways and Greyhound, there were 16 people, 8 blacks and 8 whites, and the idea was to test compliance with the Morgan decision, to see if the constitutional rights to sit anywhere they want on the buses would be upheld and for the most part they didn't they didn't encounter very much trouble. They were essentially ignored, they didn't get very much press coverage, the NAACP wasn't very enthusiastic about it, they wanted to keep the struggle in the courtroom and really not out on the streets and they did survive. But they didn't go to the deep south, they kept it in the upper south for sure, because they they

knew how dangerous it might be if they if they wandered farther south. [Interviewer] um Just a a a Aliyah just change the focal length. here And um and ju- and just say something, ready to ed- add then the Freedom Rides in 1961 took you know off from--" so just kind of an add-on. [Arsenault] OK [Arsenault] Well the Journey of Reconciliation was a prelude really to the Freedom Rides of 1961. The Freedom Ride of 1961 was based on the Journey of Reconciliation of 1947. They did essentially the same thing, although in '47 they stayed in the upper south, the Freedom Rides of course they went all across all the way to New Orleans, or at least they hoped to go to New Orleans, in the original ride. [Interviewer] Okay, let's cut. [Arsenault] I can start earlier with the why they did the Freedom Ride to get the Kennedy administration's attention-- [Interviewer] That'd be good yeah [Arsenault] That'd be [Arsenault] The whole idea behind the Freedom Ride, I mean a short version of that-- intellectually what I usually do is I talk about how, I talk just briefly

about you know Kennedy's inaugural address, how he talked about spreading freedom all over the world, but he never mentions spreading freedom in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, that kind of thing, and so Jim Farmer and CORE, "we got to slap this guy across the face." [Interviewer] That would be great. One of the things that I find fascinating-- Let's roll. [Arsenault] Okay, well when John Kennedy was elected in November of 1960, there was great hope and expectation that things would be better on matters of civil rights. That was a contrast between him and Dwight Eisenhower, he was young and had ideas, and talked about the new frontier. But when he gave his inaugural address in January of 1961 he talked about spreading freedom all over the world to China you know to other parts of Asia, to Latin America, to Africa, to everywhere but Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia. He didn't make any mention of the domestic civil rights controversy. And of course he also did not invite Martin Luther King, Dr. King to the inauguration, that was a clear snub. and

Later when the Bay of Pigs invasion happened it was a great embarrassment and it sort of reinforced his-- reinforced President Kennedy's fixation, if you will, with with foreign affairs and with Cuba and what was happening with the Cold War. It became clear that the civil rights leaders had to do something desperate, something dramatic to get his attention, that it was not on his radar screen, that he was essentially a Cold War hero and he really didn't have a great a great stake in whether freedom came now or later to the south and to African- Americans. So James Farmer and the other people in CORE came up with the idea of the Freedom Ride, "we'll just see if the administration is willing to protect our constitutional rights," we have the Boynton vs. Virginia decision recently that extended the Morgan decision that said that you have the right as any American citizen not just to sit anywhere you want on the bus, but also to go into a terminal and sit at any counter and order a cup of coffee or buy a hamburger or whatever. So they came up with an idea "let's let's go back to the Journey of Reconciliation idea of

1947, let's have a Freedom Ride, let's put blacks and whites on those buses, and and have them defy those segregation laws, those southern state laws, and see if their constitutional rights will be protected by the Kennedy administration." So That was the idea behind the Freedom Rides, to dare th- essentially to dare the federal government to do what it was supposed to do to protect their constitutional rights. [Interviewer] I just want to get you to talk a little bit about the Boynton vs. Virginia decision, just separate, so we so we just have that separate, uh and this can be really short. Tell us tell us the Boynton case, and the Boynton decision, um you know and how that kind of spurs the ride, influences the ride, because it, tell me if I'm wrong right, it seems like that that in some ways is the immediate catalyst [Arsenault] it is. [interviewer] and and it doesn't get enough credit. So just you know real real quick, that that that one in 60, there's this Boynton decision and that is like the thing that says "okay, let's go." [Arsenault] OK December 1960, the Supreme Court rendered the Boynton decision, which was a follow-up to the Morgan decision of 1947 and it essentially extended desegregation on interstate buses

to the terminals. It involved a law student from Selma, Alabama who was a law student at Howard University. He was arrested in the terminal in Richmond, Virginia he said, "I'm an interstate passenger, you have no right to do this, doesn't matter whether I'm violating Virginia segregation laws or not, there's a there's a federal constitutional right for me to go to any lunch counter I want to at the Richmond terminal," and he won his case amazingly in December of 1960. This is the month after John Kennedy was elected. And when Jim Farmer took over as the national director of CORE on the first of February in 1961, he had a stack of of letters on his desk from people who said "didn't we hear about the Boynton decision a couple months ago, didn't that say that we have the right to go and eat at any counter we want to and yet they're not allowing us to, they're intimidating us, they're telling us we're breaking the law and this can't be right, and we want you to do something about this to remind the Kennedy administration about this decision just a couple months ago." [Interviewer] Okay, let's cut for a second. you getting the feed ready? rolling ok [Arsenault] The Boynton vs. Virginia decision of December 1960

extended desegregation for interstate bus passengers to the terminals, so after that decision by law you cannot be discriminated against because of the color of your skin in the restaurants and restrooms, you had the right as any other American citizen did to use any of the facilities if you're an interstate passenger. So this was a major extension of the Morgan decision of 1947 and it was the clear precipitating force behind CORE starting Freedom Ride a few months later. [Interviewer] Let's cut. [Arsenault] I kind of misspoke there at the end, sorry. [Interviewer] Let's roll, let's get the end. [Arsenault] So the Boynton decision was a major precipitating force behind CORE starting the Freedom Ride in April of 1961. [Interviewer] Great, let's cut. [Arsenault] Well, the Freedom Rides was a simple but daring plan to apply the principles of non-violent direct action in the south including the deep south and the Congress of Racial Equality came up with the idea which they

tried earlier in the Journey of Reconciliation to put blacks and whites in small groups on commercial buses and they would deliberately violate the segregation laws of the deep south. So black riders would sit in the front of the bus and white riders would sit in the back and when they got off the buses they would go into the terminal and they would deliberately use the wrong restroom and they would sit at the wrong stool at the wrong counter and dare the officials to arrest them. Of course they went with the knowledge of the boy- of the Boynton decision and the Morgan decision that it was their constitutional right to do what they were doing but they also knew that in the south they were violating those state and local ordinances and it was very likely that they would get arrested, they might get beaten up they might even get killed so they they are they were aware of the dangers but under the principles of nonviolence and the kind of Gandhian tradition, they were daring, they were daring the forces of order to apply those laws to them and they were willing to die for their beliefs. [interviewer] Why? what did

they hope to accomplish? [Arsenault] There were essentially two strategies that seems to be involved here. One was the more idealistic notion of winning over the hearts and minds of white Americans, particularly white southerners, that they would somehow create this feeling of the beloved community within them, that they would see the light. But if they couldn't do that, they at least wanted to get political leverage. They wanted to disturb the civil peace, they wanted to insist that they wanted freedom now and they were not going to allow the Kennedy administration or the American people to go back to business as usual until they address these problems so they were deliberately being unreasonable by the tenets of the time. They were saying "we're not gonna let you continue to do this we're gon- we're gonna be out there in the streets

we're gonna be nonviolent, we're not going to strike back, we're going to apply the principles of Gandhian nonviolence, but we're not going to give up and if you arrest us others will follow us, and if you kill us others will follow us." But this a way to restore the integrity of American democracy and to move closer to this ideal of the beloved community [interviewer] um talk a little bit about um Ja- James Farmer, and we don't need a lot of his background because he was the director of CORE, he-- what did he want personally from the Freedom Rides? [Arsenault] Well Jim Farmer was one of the original founders of CORE back in 1942 but he left CORE before the Journey of Reconciliation and never went on it and he always felt bad about that, that he missed the first Freedom Ride. And so when he took over as the national director CORE in February of 1961 he had been working for the NAACP and it was kind of impatient with them, that they were

oriented towards the legal struggle and he was more of a direct action guy and he encouraged CORE to step up the pace, and along with others he came up with an idea of recreating the journey reconciliation as the freedom rides and that's what he did as his first priority when he took over. It was not only a way of reorienting CORE, but it was a kind of personal struggle for him, and I think he wanted to establish himself as a major player in terms of national civil rights leadership. When the Montgomery bus boycott took place in 1955 and '56 they applied the principles that CORE had been promoting for years but it was the Montgomery Improvement Association, it was a local group out of Montgomery, it wasn't CORE and Farmer always felt, as he said in his autobiography, that their thunder had been stolen and that the Montgomery bus boycott had maybe not quite applied the full philosophical principles of nonviolence as it was taught by

CORE and so he wanted to sort of reestablish the preeminence of CORE in the world of nonviolent direct action and that's what much of what the freedom rides was supposed to do. [interviewer] So he kinda had his own personal reasons for wanting the Freedom Rides to happen. [Arsenault] He did, he had a, I think very personal reasons, he was an emotional guy, he had a wonderful speaking voice, he was a great leader, but he had never really been on the line. He'd never put his body on the line and it was hard for him. He was more of a orator, he was an intellectual and but he grew during the Freedom Rides and eventually really distinguished himself as a person who was willing to to stick his neck out uh in a way that many other civil rights leaders were not. [Interviewer] Okay, cut. Okay, talk about Atlanta. [Arsenault] When the Freedom Ride came into Atlanta on May 13th, on that Saturday night, and high expectations, they were going to have dinner with Dr. King,

he was coming in special back from an SCLC meeting and they thought he was going to actually treat them to dinner, he didn't in the end and that was a big consideration for CORE, they didn't have much money. But they had this wonderful dinner and I think they had hopes not only to meet Dr. King but that maybe he would become a Freedom Rider, that he'd get on those buses with them. But not only did he not get on the buses with them, he pulled some of the leaders of the Freedom Ride aside and said "look I hear some pretty disturbing things from my sources in Alabama, the Alabama Klan is preparing-- the Alabama Klan is preparing quite a welcome for the Freedom Rides and you've proven your point, you've made it all the way to Atlanta, you've showed your courage, you've got the Kennedy administration's attention, I'm not sure I'd go any farther." I'm not sure if he said it exact- explicitly like that but he said "I'm not gonna get on the buses with you and if I were you I probably wouldn't go into Alabama." And of course as it turns out Jim Farmer's father died that night and his mother called him in the middle of the night and

she begged him to return to Washington to oversee the funeral. So when they went out to those buses on Mother's Day morning on that Sunday on May 14 and Jim Farmer told them that "I can't go with you, I'm going to the airport, I'm flying back to Washington," you can imagine the lumps in the throat of those riders. But amazingly none of them turned back, none of them said "I'm not going." They got on those buses that morning knowing that they were probably going into the heart of darkness, that when they got to Anniston and certainly Birmingham there would be something waiting for them. They didn't know what , they didn't have any specific information, even though the FBI did and J. Edgar Hoover knew and they could've been warned, they only had this kind of general warning from Dr. King from his sources that they were going to have some trouble in Alabama. [Interviewer] Talk a little bit about Governor Patterson, I just want to get an idea of-- so they're going into Alabama and tell me a little about this guy who is the governor, of what they're going into. [Arsenault] Well Alabama

was crucial for the Freedom Rides in part because of Governor John Patterson. He was one of John Kennedy's earliest supporters, he was sort of the unofficial campaign manager in the south for Kennedy. He was a staunch segregationist, of course the Kennedy administration was allied with many staunch segregationists in the south during the 1960 campaign, and Patterson was one of them. I think the Kennedys hoped that Patterson would be reasonable, he'd be a pragmatic politician, that he would keep the crazy-- so the Klansmen under control, that he would see that there was no violence in Alabama, but Patterson was a shrewd politician, he knew that mostly he had to keep the support of the white Alabamians um and that he obviously wanted to keep ties with the Kennedy administration, but he had to pay attention to what was happening on the ground in Alabama and he bitterly resented the Kennedys' role, as he saw it, as encouraging the Freedom Riders to come to Alabama. [Interviewer] Ok lets cut. How much do we got left in the video? --leaving Atlanta, there's two different buses and they're kinda

splitting off into two different routes . [Arsenault] Right. Well there were two buses, two Freedom buses, as they called them, that left Alabama that Mother's Day morning. They were both bound for Birmingham, both went through Anniston, one was on Greyhound one was Grey-- excuse me, one was Greyhound-- [Interviewer] Lets start over [Arsenault] Ok [Interviewer] The more you can kind of reiterate that cause I wonder if you run into this all the time that that you have to kind of constantly clarify that these were Greyhound and Trailways buses, it's not a special bus. [Arsenault] OK i'll say that they're regular passengers. [Interviewer] And the regular passengers on a Greyhound one's Trailways, one's Greyhound and they're splitting up and going in kind of two different similar routes. [Arsenault] Ok. [Interviewer] Ok lets roll [Arsenault] There were two groups of Freedom Riders leaving Atlanta on that Mother's Day morning. One group was on Greyhound, one was on Trailways, these are both commercial buses with regular passengers. As it turned out the Trailways bus actually had Klansmen on the bus, they weren't dressed in

Klan regalia but they were Klansmen who planted on the bus. There were also two-- [Interviewer] Let's stop. [Arsenault] You don't want the highway patrol stuff? Do it again then? Ok. Well there were two buses leaving Atlanta for Birmingham that Mother's Day morning, May 14th. One Greyhound, one Trailways. Two groups of Freedom Riders. There were also regular passengers on both of those buses, they left an hour apart, both went through Anniston to Birmingham. Of course only one made it all the way to Birmingham. Don't you want that or no? [Interviewer] No cut [Arsenault] Okay. There were two buses leaving Atlanta that morning, Mother's Day morning, May 14th [Interviewer] I'm sorry look at me, not the camera. [Arsenault] Okay. There were two buses leaving Atlanta that Mother's Day morning on May 14th, one Greyhound, one Trailways. They left an hour apart, there were regular passengers on both of them, they were both bound for Birmingham through Anniston-- do you want anything else? [Interviewer] Yeah we gotta end it, how much tape we got? [Arsenault] Okay [Interviewer] But try to always look at me and not the camera. [Arsenault] Okay.

[Arsenault] Well there were two buses that left Atlanta that morning, Mother's Day morning May 14th. One Greyhound, one Trailways, they both had regular passengers on each bus. They left an hour apart, they were both headed for Birmingham, in both cases I think the riders had all kinds of anxiety about what they'd face in Alabama. [Interviewer] Ok lets cut, thank you. Go ahead. [Arsenault] The obstruction of the Greyhound bus in Anniston was a very deliberate organization-- I shouldn't say, I'm going to start that again. [Interviewer] Lets cut. [Arsenault] Sure. [Interviewer] --that somebody laid down in front of the bus-- [Arsenault] Ok oh yeah yeah. [Interviewer] Ok lets roll. [Arsenault] The obstruction of the Greyhound bus in Anniston was a very deliberate and well organized affair. The Anniston Klan had it

all worked out. They had one of their members lie down in front of the bus to make sure the bus couldn't leave, they were puncturing tires, they were breaking windows, they wanted to make sure that bus couldn't leave, or at least that it couldn't leave and get all the way out of the Anniston area before they could surround it and do whatever they want to do. [Interviewer] Perfect, ok lets cut. [silence]