"I see where the state is advertising it has some empty jail space. I may go back down there and take up some of it." Hank Thomas, Freedom Rider, on route through Chattanooga
In a coordinated strategy to force the Federal government’s hand to enforce the desegregation of public transit, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began breaking the color line in buses and restaurants across the South in May, 1961. The reaction was deadly. Buses were firebombed, Riders beaten. By late summer, the infamous Parchman Prison in Mississippi was crowded with civil rights activists.
In mid-July, five riders test Chattanooga on a trip from New York to Little Rock, Arkansas. 19-year old CORE staff member Hank Thomas was accompanied by four others: John Harvard, a black physician; Wolcott Smith, a white Michigan State student; two Northern rabbis, Chaim Stern and Sidney Shanken. FBI agents shadowed their travel. The group’s arrival in town on Monday, July 17, was peaceful, as Chattanooga’s bus system had already previously desegregated. The riders were denied service at a Howard Johnson restaurant, and escorted out by police. Their time was spent in community meetings with sympathetic Chattanoogans. On Tuesday night, an integration rally drew hundreds, and featured such prominent civil rights activists as Fred Shuttlesworth and C.T. Vivian. The following day the riders left towards Memphis. Arrests of riders continued across the South.
In a coordinated strategy to force the Federal government’s hand to enforce the desegregation of public transit, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began breaking the color line in buses and restaurants across the South in May, 1961. The reaction was deadly. Buses were firebombed, Riders beaten. By late summer, the infamous Parchman Prison in Mississippi was crowded with civil rights activists.
In mid-July, five riders test Chattanooga on a trip from New York to Little Rock, Arkansas. 19-year old CORE staff member Hank Thomas was accompanied by four others: John Harvard, a black physician; Wolcott Smith, a white Michigan State student; two Northern rabbis, Chaim Stern and Sidney Shanken. FBI agents shadowed their travel. The group’s arrival in town on Monday, July 17, was peaceful, as Chattanooga’s bus system had already previously desegregated. The riders were denied service at a Howard Johnson restaurant, and escorted out by police. Their time was spent in community meetings with sympathetic Chattanoogans. On Tuesday night, an integration rally drew hundreds, and featured such prominent civil rights activists as Fred Shuttlesworth and C.T. Vivian. The following day the riders left towards Memphis. Arrests of riders continued across the South.