Freedom riders' 1947 convictions vacated in North Carolina

Source: Associated Press

Freedom riders’ 1947 convictions vacated in North Carolina

By TOM FOREMAN Jr.
June 17, 2022

Legendary civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and three other men who were sentenced to work on a chain gang in North Carolina after they launched the first of the “freedom rides” to challenge Jim Crow laws will have their sentences posthumously vacated Friday, more than seven decades later.

“While this judicial action is taking place 75 years after the injustice occurred, never should we falter in examining past wrongs, seeking reparation, and lifting those heavy burdens from our hearts and minds so that future generations may know justice,” Renée Price, chairman of the Orange County Board of Commissioners, said in a statement.

On April 9, 1947, a group of eight white men and eight Black men began the first “freedom ride” to challenge laws that mandated segregation on buses in defiance of the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court Morgan v. Virginia ruling declaring segregation on interstate travel unconstitutional.

The men boarded buses in Washington, D.C., setting out on a two-week route that included stops in Durham, Chapel Hill and Greensboro, North Carolina. As the riders attempted to board the bus in Chapel Hill, several of them were removed by force and attacked by a group of angry cab drivers. Four of the so-called Freedom Riders — Andrew Johnson, James Felmet, Bayard Rustin, and Igal Roodenko — were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to move from the front of the bus.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-government-politics-eb1a6308edb82eb271ed92c32dbe432d


FILE - Bayard Rustin, deputy director of the planned march on Washington program, points to a map showing the line of march for the demonstration for civil rights during a news conference in New York on Aug. 24, 1963. (AP Photo, File)