Journey of Reconciliation

1947 anti-segregation nonviolent protest in the southern United States

Journey of Reconciliation

Part of the Civil Rights Movement
Date| April 9 – 23, 1947
Location|

Durham, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Resulted in| Inconclusive
Parties

* Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
* American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
* Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR)

State police

|

Lead figures

* George Houser
* James Peck
* Bayard Rustin
* Dennis Banks
* Andrew Johnson
* Conrad Lynn
* Wallace Nelson
* Eugene Stanley
* William Worthy
* Nathan Wright
* Louis Adams
* Ernest Bromley
* Joe Felmet
* Homer Jack
* Worth Randle
* Igal Roodenko

Frances Bergman Genevieve Hughes Walter Bergman Mae Frances Moultrie

Casualties and losses

Deaths:
Injuries:1
Arrests: 16

Deaths:
Injuries:1

|

* v
* t
* e

Civil rights movement in Washington D.C.

National movement

* Journey of Reconciliation
* Executive Order 9981
* Prayer Pilgrimage
* Strom Thurmond filibuster
* Civil Rights Act of 1957
* 1st Youth March
* 2nd Youth March
* Civil Rights Act of 1960
* Baldwin–Kennedy meeting
* President Kennedy's civil rights address
* March on Washington
* "I Have a Dream"
* 24th U.S. Constitutional Amendment
* Civil Rights Act of 1964
* Voting Rights Act of 1965
* Civil Rights Act of 1968
* Poor People's Campaign

District of Columbia

* District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co.
* Bolling v. Sharpe
* 23rd U.S. Constitutional Amendment

The Journey of Reconciliation, also[1] called "First Freedom Ride", was a form of nonviolent direct action to challenge state segregation laws on interstate buses in the Southern United States.[2] Bayard Rustin and 18 other men and women were the early organizers of the two-week journey that began on April 9, 1947. The participants started their journey in Washington, D.C., traveled as far south as North Carolina, before returning to Washington, D.C.

The journey was seen as inspiring the later Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights Movement from May 1961 onward. James Peck, one of the white participants, also took part in the Freedom Ride of May 1961.

## History

[edit]

Sixteen men from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) took part, eight white and eight black, including the organizers, white Methodist minister George Houser of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and CORE and black Quaker Bayard Rustin of FOR and the American Friends Service Committee.[3] The other black participants were Chicago musician Dennis Banks; Andrew Johnson, a student from Cincinnati; New York attorney Conrad Lynn; Wallace Nelson, a freelance lecturer; Eugene Stanley of North Carolina A&T College; William Worthy of the New York Council for a Permanent FEPC; and Nathan Wright, a church social worker from Cincinnati. The other white participants were North Carolina ministers Louis Adams and Ernest Bromley; Joe Felmet of the Southern Workers Defense League; Homer Jack, executive secretary of the Chicago Council Against Racial and Religious Discrimination; James Peck, editor of the  Workers Defense League News Bulletin; Worth Randle, a Cincinnati biologist; and radical pacifist Igal Roodenko.[4]

The participants planned to visit fifteen cities in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Starting in Washington D.C., they went through Richmond and stopped in Petersburg. The following day, after passing through Raleigh and arriving in Durham, the bus driver reported Rustin for refusing to move to the back of the vehicle. The police did nothing, and all that happened was the bus was delayed for 45 minutes while the bus driver and Rustin refused to both move. During the two-week trip, African Americans continued to sit in front, white Americans sat in back, or sometimes side-by-side, all in violation of current state laws which required passengers to practice segregated seating in buses. The day after the bus driver called the police on Rustin, the group of eight white men and eight black men met with Intercollegiate Council for Religion in Life, and attended church services. April 13, four of the men were arrested, two black men for not giving up their seat, and two white men for defending the two black men. James Peck went to pay their bonds, and was hit by a taxi driver in the head.[1] Racial tension began to grow as the journey went on. Martin Watkins, a veteran, was beaten by a group of taxi drivers for speaking to an African American woman at a bus stop.

In May 1947, the two black men and two white men who had been arrested earlier in the bus ride faced charges afterwards and did not win appealing their sentences. On March 21, 1949, Rustin, Felmet, and Rodenko lost at the courthouse in Hillsborough and were sent to segregated chain gangs.[1]

> "Shortly thereafter, the men arrested were reunited in Greensboro with the remaining “freedom riders.” Racial tensions only heightened in the aftermath of the riders’ exodus. On April 14, Martin Watkins, a white, disabled war veteran and UNC student, was beaten by several taxi drivers for speaking with an African American woman at a bus stop. Watkins pressed charges, but the judge also brought charges against Watkins arguing that he started the fight. Debates raged for nearly a week in both the Daily Tar Heel and Chapel Hill Weekly over the incident and race relations. The “Journey of Reconciliation” continued on, eventually passing back through western North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and then returning to Virginia and Washington, D.C.

> In May 1947 those members who had been arrested went on trial and were sentenced. The riders unsuccessfully appealed their sentences. On March 21, 1949, Rustin and two white protesters surrendered at the courthouse in Hillsborough and were sent to segregated chain gangs. Rustin published journal entries about the experience. His writings, as well as the actions of the “Journey” riders in April 1947, in time inspired Rosa Parks’ nonviolent protest in 1955 and the Freedom Rides of 1960–1961."[1]

They were supported by the recent 1946 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, which prohibited segregation in interstate travel as unconstitutional, by putting "an undue burden on commerce." The Southern states were refusing to enforce the Court's decision. Based on consultation, the protesters limited their direct action to the Upper South, where the risk of violence was not as high as in the Deep South.[5]

The riders suffered several arrests, notably in North Carolina. Judge Henry Whitfield expressed his distaste for the white men involved:

> "It's about time you Jews from New York learned that you can't come down here bringing your niggers with you to upset the customs of the South. Just to teach you a lesson, I gave your black boys thirty days [on a chain gang], and I give you ninety."[6]

The NAACP and Thurgood Marshall had reservations about the use of direct action, expecting to provoke much violence with little progress toward civil rights. The NAACP did offer a limited amount of legal help for those arrested. Bayard Rustin believed that the Journey of Reconciliation, as well as other actions challenging segregation in these years, contributed to the eventual ruling of the US Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. It ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional and ordered them ended.[2][7]

## See also

[edit]

* Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1953)
* Boynton v. Virginia (1960)

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d "Journey of Reconciliation, 1947 | NCpedia". www.ncpedia.org. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
2. ^ a b "The First Freedom Ride: Bayard Rustin On His Work With CORE". History Matters. Retrieved April 29, 2008.
3. ^ Meier, August; Rudwick, Elliott (1969). "The First Freedom Ride". Phylon. 30 (3): 213–222\. doi:10.2307/273469. JSTOR 273469.
4. ^ Bayard Rustin and George Houser (1947), "We Challenged Jim Crow", a report prepared for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Fellowship of Reconciliation; published in Fellowship, April 1947. Reprinted from Down the Line, the collected writings of Bayard Rustin, Quadrangle Books, 1971. Retrieved from SouthernHistory.net[usurped], March 12, 2012.
5. ^ Robin Washington, "The History behind 'You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow!' " Archived September 8, 2012, at archive.today, New Hampshire Public Television, 1995, accessed April 26, 2010
6. ^ Arsenault, Raymond (2006). Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle For Racial Justice. Oxford University Press. pp. 53. ISBN 978-0-19-513674-6.
7. ^ "Journey of Reconciliation". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved December 5, 2019.

## Bibliography

[edit]

* Raymond Arsenault (2006). Freedom Riders:1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice: Pivotal Moments in American History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199755813.

## External links

[edit]

* SNCC Digital Gateway: CORE Organizes Journey of Reconciliation Digital documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
* PBS documentary on Journey of Reconciliation [1]
* “The First Freedom Ride:” Bayard Rustin On His Work With CORE , Columbia University Oral History Collection, George Mason University

* v
* t
* e

Civil rights movement (1954–1968)

Events
(timeline)|

| Prior to 1954|

* Journey of Reconciliation
* Executive Order 9981
* Murders of Harry and Harriette Moore
* Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
* McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950)
* Baton Rouge bus boycott

|

1954–1959|

* Brown v. Board of Education
* Bolling v. Sharpe
* Briggs v. Elliott
* Davis v. Prince Edward County
* Gebhart v. Belton
* Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company
* Emmett Till
* Montgomery bus boycott
* Browder v. Gayle
* Tallahassee bus boycott
* Mansfield school desegregation
* 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom
* "Give Us the Ballot"
* Royal Ice Cream sit-in
* Little Rock Nine
* Cooper v. Aaron
* Civil Rights Act of 1957
* Ministers' Manifesto
* Katz Drug Store sit-in
* Kissing Case
* Biloxi wade-ins

1960–1963|

* New Year's Day March
* Sit-in movement
* Greensboro sit-ins
* Nashville sit-ins
* Sibley Commission
* Atlanta sit-ins
* Savannah Protest Movement
* Greenville Eight
* Civil Rights Act of 1960
* Ax Handle Saturday
* New Orleans school desegregation
* Gomillion v. Lightfoot
* Boynton v. Virginia
* University of Georgia desegregation riot
* Rock Hill sit-ins
* Robert F. Kennedy's Law Day Address
* Freedom Rides
* Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks
* Garner v. Louisiana
* Albany Movement
* Cambridge movement
* University of Chicago sit-ins
* "Second Emancipation Proclamation"
* Meredith enrollment, Ole Miss riot
* Atlanta's Berlin Wall
* "Segregation now, segregation forever"
* Stand in the Schoolhouse Door
* 1963 Birmingham campaign
* Letter from Birmingham Jail
* Children's Crusade
* Birmingham riot
* 16th Street Baptist Church bombing
* John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation on Civil Rights
* Detroit Walk to Freedom
* March on Washington
* "I Have a Dream"
* Big Six
* St. Augustine movement

1964–1968|

* Twenty-fourth Amendment
* Chester school protests
* Bloody Tuesday
* 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protests
* Freedom Summer
* workers' murders
* Civil Rights Act of 1964
* Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States
* Katzenbach v. McClung
* 1964–1965 Scripto strike
* 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches
* "How Long, Not Long"
* SCOPE Project
* Voting Rights Act of 1965
* Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections
* March Against Fear
* White House Conference on Civil Rights
* Chicago Freedom Movement/Chicago open housing movement
* Loving v. Virginia
* Memphis sanitation strike
* King assassination
* funeral
* riots
* Civil Rights Act of 1968
* Poor People's Campaign
* Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
* Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.
* 1968 Olympics Black Power salute

Activist
groups|

* Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
* American Friends Service Committee
* Atlanta Negro Voters League
* Atlanta Student Movement
* Black Panther Party
* Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
* Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
* Committee for Freedom Now
* Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
* An Appeal for Human Rights
* Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
* Council of Federated Organizations
* Dallas County Voters League
* Deacons for Defense and Justice
* Georgia Council on Human Relations
* Highlander Folk School
* Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
* Lowndes County Freedom Organization
* Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
* Montgomery Improvement Association
* NAACP
* Youth Council
* Nashville Student Movement
* Nation of Islam
* Northern Student Movement
* National Council of Negro Women
* National Urban League
* Operation Breadbasket
* Regional Council of Negro Leadership
* Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
* Southern Regional Council
* Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
* The Freedom Singers
* United Auto Workers (UAW)
* Wednesdays in Mississippi
* Women's Political Council

Activists|

* Juanita Abernathy
* Ralph Abernathy
* Victoria Gray Adams
* Zev Aelony
* Mathew Ahmann
* Muhammad Ali
* William G. Anderson
* Gwendolyn Armstrong
* Arnold Aronson
* Ella Baker
* James Baldwin
* Marion Barry
* Daisy Bates
* Harry Belafonte
* James Bevel
* Claude Black
* Gloria Blackwell
* Randolph Blackwell
* Unita Blackwell
* Ezell Blair Jr.
* Joanne Bland
* Julian Bond
* Joseph E. Boone
* William Holmes Borders
* Amelia Boynton
* Bruce Boynton
* Raylawni Branch
* Stanley Branche
* Ruby Bridges
* Aurelia Browder
* H. Rap Brown
* Ralph Bunche
* John H. Calhoun
* Guy Carawan
* Stokely Carmichael
* Johnnie Carr
* James Chaney
* J. L. Chestnut
* Shirley Chisholm
* Colia Lafayette Clark
* Ramsey Clark
* Septima Clark
* Xernona Clayton
* Eldridge Cleaver
* Kathleen Cleaver
* Josephine Dobbs Clement
* Charles E. Cobb Jr.
* Annie Lee Cooper
* Dorothy Cotton
* Claudette Colvin
* Vernon Dahmer
* Jonathan Daniels
* Abraham Lincoln Davis
* Angela Davis
* Joseph DeLaine
* Dave Dennis
* Annie Bell Robinson Devine
* John Wesley Dobbs
* Patricia Stephens Due
* Joseph Ellwanger
* Charles Evers
* Medgar Evers
* Myrlie Evers-Williams
* Chuck Fager
* James Farmer
* Walter Fauntroy
* James Forman
* Marie Foster
* Golden Frinks
* Andrew Goodman
* Robert Graetz
* Fred Gray
* Jack Greenberg
* Dick Gregory
* Lawrence Guyot
* Prathia Hall
* Fannie Lou Hamer
* Fred Hampton
* William E. Harbour
* Vincent Harding
* Dorothy Height
* Audrey Faye Hendricks
* Lola Hendricks
* Aaron Henry
* Oliver Hill
* Donald L. Hollowell
* James Hood
* Myles Horton
* Zilphia Horton
* T. R. M. Howard
* Ruby Hurley
* Cecil Ivory
* Jesse Jackson
* Jimmie Lee Jackson
* Richie Jean Jackson
* T. J. Jemison
* Esau Jenkins
* Barbara Rose Johns
* Vernon Johns
* Frank Minis Johnson
* Clarence Jones
* J. Charles Jones
* Matthew Jones
* Vernon Jordan
* Tom Kahn
* Clyde Kennard
* A. D. King
* C.B. King
* Coretta Scott King
* Martin Luther King Jr.
* Martin Luther King Sr.
* Bernard Lafayette
* James Lawson
* Bernard Lee
* Sanford R. Leigh
* Jim Letherer
* Stanley Levison
* John Lewis
* Viola Liuzzo
* Z. Alexander Looby
* Joseph Lowery
* Clara Luper
* Danny Lyon
* Malcolm X
* Mae Mallory
* Vivian Malone
* Bob Mants
* Thurgood Marshall
* Benjamin Mays
* Franklin McCain
* Charles McDew
* Ralph McGill
* Floyd McKissick
* Joseph McNeil
* James Meredith
* William Ming
* Jack Minnis
* Amzie Moore
* Cecil B. Moore
* Douglas E. Moore
* Harriette Moore
* Harry T. Moore
* Queen Mother Moore
* William Lewis Moore
* Irene Morgan
* Bob Moses
* William Moyer
* Elijah Muhammad
* Diane Nash
* Charles Neblett
* Huey P. Newton
* Edgar Nixon
* Jack O'Dell
* James Orange
* Rosa Parks
* James Peck
* Charles Person
* Homer Plessy
* Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
* Fay Bellamy Powell
* Rodney N. Powell
* Al Raby
* Lincoln Ragsdale
* A. Philip Randolph
* George Raymond
* George Raymond Jr.
* Bernice Johnson Reagon
* Cordell Reagon
* James Reeb
* Frederick D. Reese
* Walter Reuther
* Gloria Richardson
* David Richmond
* Bernice Robinson
* Jo Ann Robinson
* Angela Russell
* Bayard Rustin
* Bernie Sanders
* Michael Schwerner
* Bobby Seale
* Pete Seeger
* Cleveland Sellers
* Charles Sherrod
* Alexander D. Shimkin
* Fred Shuttlesworth
* Modjeska Monteith Simkins
* Glenn E. Smiley
* A. Maceo Smith
* Kelly Miller Smith
* Mary Louise Smith
* Maxine Smith
* Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
* Charles Kenzie Steele
* Hank Thomas
* Dorothy Tillman
* A. P. Tureaud
* Hartman Turnbow
* Albert Turner
* C. T. Vivian
* A. T. Walden
* Wyatt Tee Walker
* Hollis Watkins
* Walter Francis White
* Roy Wilkins
* Hosea Williams
* Kale Williams
* Robert F. Williams
* Q. V. Williamson
* Andrew Young
* Whitney Young
* Sammy Younge Jr.
* Bob Zellner
* James Zwerg

By region|

* Omaha, Nebraska
* South Carolina

Movement
songs|

* "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
* "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
* "Kumbaya"
* "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
* "Oh, Freedom"
* "This Little Light of Mine"
* "We Shall Not Be Moved"
* "We Shall Overcome"
* "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"

Influences|

* Nonviolence
* Padayatra
* Sermon on the Mount
* Mahatma Gandhi
* Ahimsa
* Satyagraha
* The Kingdom of God Is Within You
* Frederick Douglass
* W. E. B. Du Bois
* Mary McLeod Bethune

Related|

* Lyndon B. Johnson
* Jim Crow laws
* Lynching in the United States
* Plessy v. Ferguson
* Separate but equal
* Buchanan v. Warley
* Hocutt v. Wilson
* Sweatt v. Painter
* Hernandez v. Texas
* Loving v. Virginia
* African-American women in the movement
* Jews in the civil rights movement
* Fifth Circuit Four
* 16th Street Baptist Church
* Kelly Ingram Park
* A.G. Gaston Motel
* Bethel Baptist Church
* Brown Chapel
* Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
* Holt Street Baptist Church
* Edmund Pettus Bridge
* March on Washington Movement
* African-American churches attacked
* List of lynching victims in the United States
* Freedom Schools
* Freedom songs
* Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
* "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
* Voter Education Project
* 1960s counterculture
* African American founding fathers of the United States
* Eyes on the Prize

Legacy|

* In popular culture
* Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
* Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
* Civil Rights Memorial
* Civil Rights Movement Archive
* Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
* Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
* Freedom Rides Museum
* Freedom Riders National Monument
* King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
* Martin Luther King Jr. Day
* Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
* other King memorials
* Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
* National Civil Rights Museum
* National Voting Rights Museum
* St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
* Olympic Black Power Statue

Noted
historians|

* Taylor Branch
* Clayborne Carson
* John Dittmer
* Michael Eric Dyson
* Chuck Fager
* Adam Fairclough
* David Garrow
* David Halberstam
* Vincent Harding
* Steven F. Lawson
* Doug McAdam
* Diane McWhorter
* Charles M. Payne
* Thomas E. Ricks
* Timothy Tyson
* Akinyele Umoja
* Movement photographers

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