Freedom Riders Vs War

McWhorter, Diane. “The Enduring Courage of the Freedom Riders.” JSTOR.org, Version 1, Number 61, The JBHE Foundation Inc, 2008, Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. March, 2017 The article, The Enduring courage of the Freedom riders, By: Diane McWhorter, talks about the strategies used to gain equal rights for African Americans in the South.

Freedom Riders exposed the many ways of Southern resistance by the numerous acts of violence committed towards them. Violence was experienced not from civilians, police officers and a mass of Ku Klux Klan members (KKK). The Freedom riders faced bus bombings, being beaten, and near lynching. The Freedom Riders decided to unmask what was happening in the south to showcase the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia in 1946 and Boynton v. Virginia in 1960, which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. "The Riders' dangerous passage through the bus terminals and jails of the Jim Crow South represented only one part of an extended journey for justice that stretched back to the dawn of American history and beyond" (Arsenault 10). The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored most of the Freedom Rides, but some were also organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Freedom Rides consisted of dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters, conducted by students and youth throughout the South, and boycotts of retail establishments that maintained segregated facilities, beginning in 1960.The Supreme Court's decision in Boynton supported the right of interstate travelers to disregard local segregation ordinances. Southern local and state police considered the actions of the Freedom Riders to be

Imagine having to run away from your hometown with thousands of other boys you don’t know. Then imagine having to walk 16 hours a day to provide dirty water for your family. Well there’s a boy named Salva that had to run away and walk thousands of miles not knowing where he’s going or where is family is. But for a girl named Nya she had to persevere walking through the hot weather stepping on thorns for 16 hours everyday just to provide dirty water for their family. Nya and Salva have a hard and sad life, but they couldn’t have survived through it without unity, love, and perseverance.

These threads state that women had no rights and we were supposed to do what was expected of us. In the 1900’s, woman had certain characteristics that were expected of them. Some of those happened to be fertile, obedient, religious, domestic, and pure. The way things like this got brought to the attention of others was by advertising it as ideal, then we pass it along for everyone to believe and expect that. It was known in this time that not working as a women, makes you maternal and pure. Also known as motherhood, which stated that we were supposed to live at home, and be caregivers. We were not allowed to work. In 2016 people expect the ideal women to be attractive, educated, healthy, domestic, and balanced. No one fits the ideal women ideology because it is impossible.

“If not us, then who? If not now, then when? Will there be a better day for it tomorrow or next year? Will it be less dangerous then? Will someone else’s children have to risk their lives instead of us risking ours?”

Throughout history, there have been a lot of different movements of the rights of women. There were many people who tried to change the view of women in the past, and there still are. Some people might say that women are treated equally and some say they aren’t. In the eighteenth century, an English philosopher named Mary Wollstonecraft started the first act of feminism. After Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet, The Rights of Man, Wollstonecraft responded with her work “ A Vindication of the Rights of Men” (Brody 74). After writing the first book, two years later, Wollstonecraft wrote the second volume named “The Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” In this book, Wollstonecraft talks about how men has more rights and advocates for equal treatment

On May 20th, the Nashville riders went back to Birmingham where there were no incidents. Then, all of the Freedom Riders traveled to Montgomery where a mob of men, women, and children carrying baseball bats, tire irons, and bricks met them at the bus terminal. The angry mob swarmed the riders and they were walking off the bus and beat the passengers. They attacked SNCC activists John Lewis and Jim Zwerg, who were both severely injured in this act of violence.

Everyone experiences moments of suffering at one point in their lives. These moments can be referred to as obstacles. These obstacles, when not overcome, can be detrimental to the physical and mental well being of someone. In A Narrative of the Captivity, Mary Rowlandson describes being a Puritan captured by Indians as a result of King Philip’s war during the 17th century. Not only did she have to live alongside the Indians as a prisoner, but she was also captured and separated from her children. In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Equiano and his sister were kidnapped and traded among various households as servants. Every time Equiano managed to ease the pain, he was deprived from the alleviation, such as the time he was separated from his sister. Both authors suffered a great amount due to the fact that they lost important people in their lives and were filled with terror at the mere thought of being held captive. The difference between these two stories is the means they use to try to overcome their obstacles.

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. By Raymond Arsenault New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. In the book, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, historian Raymond Arsenault, writes about the six month between the spring and summer of 1961 where four hundred and fifty men and women rode segregated buses in the south. Their mission was to defy the non-enforcement of the Supreme Court decisions that ruled segregated public buses were unconstitutional, and how majority of white southerners did not observe these laws.

“A positive attitude gives you power over your circumstances, instead of your circumstances having power over you” (Meyer, n.d.). These words spoken by Joyce Meyer (n.d.) depict the importance of a positive perspective in the midst of turbulent situations. Similarly, Elie Wiesel’s (2006) novel Night and the movie “Life is Beautiful” (2000), portray two stories of characters that are thrown into dangerous and torturous situations. In both stories, each individual has the opportunity to view their circumstances in a positive or negative way. Furthermore, both documentaries contained the unique element of a father / son relationship, which made an impact on how each character viewed their respective events.

“Freedom Riders” were a group of people, both black and white, who were civil rights activists from the North who “meant to demonstrate that segregated travel on interstate buses, even though banned by an I.C.C. Ruling, were still being enforced throughout much of the South” (The South 16). The Riders attempted to prove this by having a dozen or so white and black Freedom Riders board buses in the North and travel through Southern cities. This was all “a coldly calculated attempt to speed up integration by goading the South, forcing the Southern extremists to explode their tempers” ('Freedom Riders' 20). The author of the Newsweek article stated this as the Southern opinion of the reason for the Freedom Riders. The

The Freedom Riders were a group of college students and leaders of various racial equality organizations, both blacks and whites, which tested the law of integration for public transportation. The law was instated, but Alabama especially didn’t follow it. The Freedom Riders rode buses into the cities to see if the townspeople accepted or declined the new law. They in turn ended up beating, pummeling, and chasing the riders out of town with the white mobs. The Freedom Riders violently fought the segregation of blacks and whites for public transportation systems, and their victory led to the integration of many other places and the making of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Amongst the variety of texts and literature presented throughout the year, all works make an overall connection to socialization or liberation. Significantly, the most relatable, inspiring and emotive pieces were those where character demonstrated true courage and determination to swim against the stream in order to reach for milestones and surpass the influences of oppression.

Life is something that requires a considerable amount of physical and mental effort. Some are fortunate enough to have everything prepared for them. Such as some are born into money; some come across good fortune yet most work hard from the start to get some where in the world. It just all depends on how you were brought into this world. For some people, life is full of stress and hardships. That’s how life was for someone very dear to me. He had it difficult from the start. However he chose not to let life get him down. When life gave him lemons, he made lemonade.

All agree in recognising that fact females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet women are told that feminity is in danger; they are exhorted to be women, remain women, and become women. Very often privilege depends upon inequality of members majority impose its rule upon the minority or persecutes it. But women are not a minority; there are as many women as men on earth. Again, the two groups concerned have often been originally independent; they may have been formerly unaware of each other’s existence or perhaps they recognized each other’s autonomy.