Freedom Riders

Civil rights scholars have increasingly shifted their attention away from the movement's heyday and major campaigns of the early 1960s to less well known campaigns, leaders, organizations, and communities. Raymond Arsenault's finely crafted narrative history demonstrates that there is still much to be gained by revisiting the movement's epic battles. Freedom Riders is the definitive history of the 1961 freedom ride campaigns and one of the best books written about the civil rights struggle. In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (core), having recovered from organizational challenges of the 1950s, was eager to claim a central place in the burgeoning struggle in the South. core leaders revived a strategy they had employed tentatively in 1947 to test compliance with laws that banned segregated interstate bus travel. On May 4, two interracial teams boarded busses in Washington, D.C., bound for New Orleans to arrive May 17. As the title suggests, Arsenault keeps a close eye on the activists—their background, motivations, and experience—but he also provides an equally nuanced analysis of the many other actors who shaped the freedom rides and the broader social context

Civil rights · Context (archaeology · Economic Justice · EPIC · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · American Political and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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