Civil Rights – Freedom Rides and Albany Document Questions
Freedom Rides (Document 5)
1. How did the Freedom Riders’ strategy test the government’s willingness to enforce the
law?
The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) started the program Freedom Riders to force the president to
Enforce the ruling of the Supreme Court.
2. How did the Freedom Riders’ strategy anticipate the violent response of white
segregationists? How did they plan to use that response to their advantage?
They anticipate it by predicting the amount of segregationist by counting the amount of segregated
establishments in the area of the protest.
3. Farmer explained the difference between the Freedom Riders’ approach – to challenge
the federal government to uphold the court’s decision – and civil disobedience, a
strategy in which protesters violate what they hold to be unjust laws. Why do you think
he made the distinction? To whom do you think the difference mattered? How do you
feel about one approach versus the other?
the Freedom Riders developed a new strategy: fill the jails. They called on civil rights activists to join them on the
Freedom Rides, and buses from all over the country headed South carrying activists committed to challenging
segregation. Over the course of the summer, more than 300 Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, where they
refused bail and instead filled the jails, often facing beatings, harassment, and deplorable conditions. More than half
of the white Freedom Riders were Jewish.
4. Some people argued that the Freedom Riders took unnecessary risks with their own
lives; others felt that such risks were necessary to force the federal government to take
responsibility for enforcing the law. How do you evaluate their decision to risk injury?
Albany Movement (Document 1)
The freedom fighters used to rebel against the dominating committees.
5. What were the goals of the campaign in Albany?
The Albany Movement aimed to end all forms of racial segregation in the city, focusing initially on
desegregating travel facilities, forming a permanent biracial committee to discuss further desegregation, and
the release of those jailed in segregation protests.
6. How would you evaluate the success of the Albany campaign? Why did some regard the
Albany Movement as a failure? What lessons did King and the SCLC learn in Albany
about effective methods to confront segregation?
The best evaluation of the events in Albany, Birmingham, and Washington is that it helped to intensify the Civil
Rights Movement. Hence, we can infer the success and failure of the events in Albany, Birmingham, and
Washington helped to intensify the Civil Rights Movement as they were the targets of police brutality.
7. What tensions within the Civil Rights Movement did the Albany campaign expose?
It was the first mass movement in the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the
desegregation of an entire community, and it resulted in the jailing of more than 1,000
African Americans in Albany and surrounding rural counties. The Albany as well
exposed that the Civil Rights Movement was gaining much more traction than
previously thought.