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WEDNESDAY • AUGUST 28 • 2013
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A newspaper in education supplement TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee Statement of Purpose
We affirm the philosophical or religious
ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our
purpose, the presupposition of our faith, and
the manner of our action. Nonviolence as
it grows from the Judeo-Christian tradition
seeks a social order of justice permeated
by love. Integration of human endeavor
represents the crucial first step towards such
a society.
Through nonviolence, courage displaces
fear; love transforms hate. Acceptance
dissipates prejudice; hopes ends despair.
Peace dominates war; faith reconciles doubt.
Mutual regard cancels enmity. Justice for
all overcomes injustice. The redemptive
community supersedes systems of gross
social immorality.
Love is the central motif of nonviolence.
Love is the force by which God binds man to
himself and man to man. Such love goes to
the extreme; it remains loving and forgiving
even in the midst of hostility. It matches the
capacity of evil to inflict suffering with an even
more enduring capacity to absorb evil, all the
while persisting in love.
By appealing to conscience and
standing on the moral nature of human
existence, nonviolence nurtures the
atmosphere in which reconciliation and
justice become actual possibilities.
In 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
began to organize Freedom Rides throughout the
South to determine whether bus stations were com-
plying with the Supreme Court ruling to integrate
interstate public bus travel. Student volunteers were
bused in to test the ruling and new laws prohibiting
segregation.
The initial plan called for an interracial group to
travel south on Trailway and Greyhound buses from
Washington, D.C. to Atlanta, then through Alabama
and Mississippi to arrive in New Orleans on May
17, 1961, the 7th anniversary of the Supreme Court
Brown Decision.
John Lewis, who became SNCC chairman in 1963
and a Georgia Congressman in 1986, was one of 13
Freedom Riders, seven black and six white. As they
traveled south they stopped at Rock Hall, S.C. Lewis
told of the experience, “As we started in the door of
the white waiting room, we were met by a group of
white young men that beat us and hit us, knocking us
out, left us lying on the sidewalk…”
When the Greyhound bus arrived at Anniston,
Alabama, a mob was waiting for them. They decided
not to test the terminal, but the crowd slashed at the
tires. James Farmer, one of the founders of CORE,
said, “The bus got to the outskirts of Anniston
and the tires blew out…Members of the mob had
boarded cars and followed the bus…the members of
the mob surrounded it, held the door closed, and a
member of the mob threw a firebomb into the bus…
[while] local police mingling with the mob…”
The riders managed to escape the burning bus
before it was totally engulfed in flames.
The Freedom Rides expanded even with the
violence occurring and the certainty of jail sentences.
Hundreds were jailed, a quarter of them women.
Most served time in the southern state penitentiaries.
In the summer of 1961, while the Freedom Riders
were serving their sentences, U.S. Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, brother of President John F. Ken-
nedy, petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion to develop regulations banning segregation in
interstate travel. In late September, the ICC issued
regulations enabling the federal government to
enforce the Supreme Court ruling that segregation in
interstate bus travel is unconstitutional.
Freedom Riders
This SNCC poster showing John Lewis praying with others. Lewis
became SNCC chairman in 1963.
Freedom Riders gather with authorities alongside their
burning bus after a mob attack outside Anniston, AL. The
photo circulated in the national and world press helping
people understand the horror of hatred and prejudice.
Credit: FBI
“We want the world to know that we no
longer accept the inferior position of second-
class citizenship. We are willing to go to jail,
be ridiculed, spat upon and even suffer physi-
cal violence to obtain First Class Citizenship.”
— newsletter of students at Barber-Scotia
College, Concord, N.C.
Greensboro as more students began a far-reach-
ing boycott of stores that had segregated lunch
counters. Sales at the boycotted stores dropped
by a third, leading the stores' owners to abandon
their segregation policies. Black employees of the
Greensboro Woolworth store were the first to
be served at the store's lunch counter on July 25,
1960. The next day, the entire Woolworth's chain
was desegregated, serving blacks and whites alike.
Greensboro Four: Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (later known
as Jibreel Khazan), Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond
Ministers outside an F.W. Woolworth store in New York City,
April 14, 1960, protest the store’s lunch counter segregation
at the chain’s southern branches.
Credit: Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram and
Sun Collection
