Bus Tour Follows Freedom Riders’ Route

Four buses departed Nashville Saturday morning loaded with some 200 passengers who plan to retrace the 1961 Freedom Riders route.

The Nashville Tennessean reported that the weekend ride would include students from Vanderbilt, Fisk and Tennessee State universities and would make stops at key locations in the history of the civil rights movement.

The tour will arrive in by Montgomery, Ala., Saturday afternoon and will visit the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham on Sunday.

The original Freedom Ride left Washington on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17 for the seventh anniversary of the Brown vs. Board decision desegregating schools. However, the riders never made it to New Orleans after being greeted by violent crowds in Birmingham.

Ultimately, however, the violence forced the Kennedy administration to take a firmer stand on civil rights.