American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Harris Wofford, 3 of 3

how successful they do the freedom rises one of the most successful enterprises in american politics i think they move the whole country to pay attention that they galvanized the government of the united states and within two weeks of leave the bombing and being in anniston the attorney general had taken action to the with the interstate commerce commission with a petition to get them to enforce the supreme court ruling and within of three or four months that slow moving quake body independent body responded to the pressure from the attorney general and the president and took the action and a year later the freedom ride group them that responded when untested the results and the results in just one year was that there was no place left where there was colored and white and segregation in the terminals and they want

everything they had sought in that that freedom ride it's it's one of the great achievements of non violent direct action you could almost say in the history of the world well you know i want to ask you one of the things that i think of it is it also did tom and i don't question it was that they did say that this this this thing i think we have problems earlier that continues you know through the civil rights movement is correlation ship what the government government and in the civil rights movement that had been there before the government government intervened government became became part of the village's relationship that their successor president it became a pattern that occurred later in the days in birmingham when king was in jail and that it occurred with a

march from selma to montgomery ala first there's initiative taken by the free riders or martin luther king but you take action you do it peacefully non violently there's violence or a threat of the violence that is part of what stirs people that think they've got a day off the diamond do something and then it would be just one hand tried to clap if there was no response from the government you have to have a meeting of popular action like that protest and public power responding and it happened with the freedom rides not just and finally taking action to get the buses to go on the trips to be completed but to get the goal achieved of ending segregation and discrimination and interstate travel and that pattern became the pattern throughout the rest of the kennedy years and into the johnson years as one stop what

will have a quick second are able to leave montgomery they go into mississippi and and people are some not some arrested was their time agreement between him and we did you guys know that happen in the city that they would be arrested yeah well my understanding is that it was assumed that mississippi had the right to arrest and put in jail people violating their laws and can have the legal issues of the propriety of that arrest don't live in the courts as they were fairly rapidly yes i think the it was a it was presumed that was going to happen and i think most of the writers that were going into

that face that and decided they were ready to go to jail and they get their first that this effort four years ago the gaza in the city don't know what they're facing and they you know and monastery was a bail agreement might have been some kind of agreement between the white house and twain and i think there was but i don't know that i'm alone and there knows for sure that they did at the time but i think it was understood that they would probably face arrest but no more violence you know that that nine the church from from where you were from where you were sitting well with you know that i was sitting in the white house kind of follow what was happening it was a moving target but into that night you had great characters of the united states dealing with each other on life and death matters to

the church was filled with terrified people but also people that were responding to sing we shall overcome on and i'm full of power and courage and martin luther king their leader spent long times on the phone with the attorney general of the united states and their clash was remarkable question which was robert kennedy feels he is doing everything the large and larger number of federal marshals are on their way to the first batch was arriving and was was it was handling the crowd and more were to come and you'd gone way out on the limb feeling here to respond to something that he had hope that we wouldn't have taken place martin luther king being asked to be patient is saying it's going on a

hundred years since the constitution declared a racial discrimination unconstitutional and slavery ended that's a long time we've been waiting and we know that power like yours won't move unless we'd put fire under your feet morales martin was saying and robert kennedy was saying you'd be as dead as kills he's not safe if we hadn't come to your aid and that set all the sleeping in dictionaries to find out just what kills sees nuts were and i can't remember what the answer what is so so then you know what they were there are no more but we know that it's an interesting part of the story i know it well and i

was exonerated and redstone's millions maybe i do so easily and they came in large enough numbers so that they were able to escort the people out of the church but without violence and without him all this it's so hard to believe in a one loss to life with a degree of violence from the very beginning and the writers got through this again but this may be the last time what was what what were your thoughts whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa you thinking as and these people are trapped in the church and then there's a mob outside and kennedy's own phone to day and in this really long one i knew that the attorney general

was asking for those federal marshals ticks to move faster and faster and more of them and to get there and all one could do was hope they came in time and they did i barely remember that as carol one thing that many of us think that martin luther king was the most important man in american politics to this day and will last century but i think it's important to see that this crucial step in civil rights

was initiated the first round not just of young boys young and old a lot of old timers and then it was the young as with the sit ins and their role in the civil rights movement deserves a major part of the history of how americans learned to govern themselves why would you settle for those this was a pivotal moment in american history and workers throughout this is a pivotal moment in american history because no one knew until the government responded to the non violent direct action of the freedom riders that the government was going to respond and it was touch and go as to whether there would be enough of a response and in the end the story is of it of response that actually achieves the goal and that

set a pattern that produced street be the winning of the two great things that king and the civil rights movement were then concentrating on ending public segregation and winning the right to vote and in one little more than a decade of non violent direct action and the public responds by the power of the two presidents john kennedy and johnson those two goals were achieved the mountain still declined or there we haven't climbed imber well those two goals were achieved by the time robert kennedy and martin luther king were killed on the set spring of nineteen sixty eight