The Freedom Riders

In 1961 the Freedom Rides spread across the South to place pressure on local communities and the federal government to implement court-ordered desegregation of bus terminal facilities. Little Rock’s first Freedom Riders, a contingent of five members of the St. Louis branch of the Congress of Racial Equality, arrived on the evening of July 10 at the Mid-West Trailways bus station at Markham and Louisiana. They were arrested soon after arrival. Two day’s later they were released. The city feared the prospect of hitting the headlines for racial unrest with the damage done by the 1957 Central High Crisis still a recent memory. The pressure exerted by the Freedom Rides, together with an Interstate Commerce Commission order to desegregate, led to the integration of all Little Rock’s bus terminals on November 1, 1961. My name is John Kirk for the History Department at UALR and this has been an Arkansas moment.