Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides"A compelling, spellbinding examination of a pivotal event in civil rights history . . . a highly readable and dramatic account of a major turning point." — Journal of African-American History Black Americans in the Jim Crow South could not escape the grim reality of racial segregation, whether enforced by law or by custom. In Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides, author Derek Charles Catsam shows that courtrooms, classrooms, and cemeteries were not the only front lines in African Americans' prolonged struggle for basic civil rights. Buses, trains, and other modes of public transportation provided the perfect means for civil rights activists to protest the second-class citizenship of African Americans, bringing the reality of the violence of segregation into the consciousness of America and the world. Freedom's Main Line argues that the Freedom Rides, a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, were a logical, natural evolution of such earlier efforts as the Journey of Reconciliation, relying on the principles of nonviolence so common in the larger movement. The impact of the Freedom Rides, however, was unprecedented, fixing the issue of civil rights in the national consciousness. Later activists were often dubbed Freedom Riders even if they never set foot on a bus. With challenges to segregated transportation as his point of departure, Catsam chronicles black Americans' long journey toward increased civil rights. Freedom's Main Line tells the story of bold incursions into the heart of institutional discrimination, journeys undertaken by heroic individuals who forced racial injustice into the national and international spotlight and helped pave the way for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. |
Contents
Segregated Interstate Transport on the Ground | |
Preparing for the Freedom Rides | |
Hallelujah Im a Travelin Freedom Riding through the Old Dominion | |
The Carolinas | |
From Georgia into Alabama | |
Showdown in Birmingham | |
Montgomery | |
That Irreducible Citadel of Southernism | |
From Jackson City Jail to Parchman Farm | |
Legacies of the Freedom Rides | |
Other editions - View all
Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides Derek Charles Catsam No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
activists Alabama Anniston arrested arrived Atlanta attorney Baltimore Afro-American Bayard Rustin Birmingham Boynton Bull Connor Burke Marshall bus station buses Challenged Jim Crow church Citizens Civil Rights Movement Connor CORE Papers Council crowd desegregation Diane Nash federal Files folder Frances Bergman Fred Shuttlesworth Freedom Ride George Houser Georgia Governor Greensboro Greyhound integration Interstate Commerce interstate transportation interview Jackson Daily jail James Farmer Jim Peck John Lewis Journey of Reconciliation Justice King Klan later leaders Marshall massive resistance Mississippi Montgomery NAACP Nashville Negro nonviolent North Carolina officer Oral History organizations Orleans Parchman participants passengers Patterson Perkins police political protest Quoted race racial response restaurants Riders Robert Kennedy Rock Hill seat segregation Seigenthaler Shuttlesworth sit-ins SNCC Southern Supreme Court terminal Thomas told Trailways trip University violence Virginia waiting room Walking Washington Wind York Zwerg