Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice / Edition 1

by Raymond Arsenault

Overview

The author offers a meticulously researched account of the Freedom Rides, one of the most compelling chapters in the history of civil rights. The book paints a harrowing picture of the outpouring of hatred and violence that greeted the Freedom Riders in Alabama and Mississippi.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195327144
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/19/2007
Series:	Pivotal Moments in American History
Pages:	704
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Raymond Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. A graduate of Princeton and Brandeis, he is the author of two prize-winning books and numerous articles on race, civil rights, and regional culture.

Table of Contents

PLEASE NOTE: this TOC is for the unabridged edition.

List of Maps
Editors' Note
Preface
1 You Don't Have To Ride Jim Crow
2 Beside the Weary Road
3 Hallelujah! I'm A-Travelin'
4 Alabama Bound
5 Get on Board, Little Children
6 If You Miss Me From the Back of the Bus
7 Freedom's Coming and It Won't Be Long
8 Make Me a Captive, Lord
9 Ain't Gonna Let No Jail House Turn Me 'Round
10 Woke Up This Morning with My Mind on Freedom
11 Oh, Freedom
Epilogue: Glory Bound
Appendix: Roster of Freedom Riders
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

This is a story that only benefits from Mr. Arsenault's deliberately slowed-down narration. Moment by moment, he recreates the sense of crisis, and the terrifying threat of violence that haunted the first Freedom Riders, and their waves of successors, every mile of the way through the Deep South. He skillfully puts into order a bewildering series of events and leads the reader, painstakingly, through the political complexities of the time. Perhaps his greatest achievement is to show, through a wealth of detail, just how contested every inch of terrain was, and how uncertain the outcome, as the Freedom Riders pressed forward, hundreds of them filling Southern jails.
— The New York Times

William Grimes

… I entirely agree with a statement made by my former Justice Department colleague the late sociologist James Laue, and quoted by Arsenault: "The national mobilization of conscience which had begun in Montgomery and grown in 1960 reached full bloom with the Freedom Rides." To find out how that happened, one must read Arsenault's superb rendering of that great saga. For those interested in understanding 20th-century America, this is an essential book.
— The Washington Post

Roger Wilkins

"Drawing on personal papers, F.B.I. files, and interviews with more than 200 participants in the rides, Arsenault brings vividly to life a defining moment in modern American history.... Rescues from obscurity the men and women who, at great personal risk, rode public buses into the South in order to challenge segregation in interstate travel.... Relates the story of the first Freedom Ride and the more than 60 that followed in dramatic, often moving detail."—Eric Foner, The New York Times Book Review

"Authoritative, compelling history.... This is a story that only benefits from Mr. Arsenault's deliberately slowed-down narration. Moment by moment, he recreates the sense of crisis, and the terrifying threat of violence that haunted the first Freedom Riders, and their waves of successors, every mile of the way through the Deep South. He skillfully puts into order a bewildering series of events and leads the reader, painstakingly, through the political complexities of the time. Perhaps his greatest achievement is to show, through a wealth of detail, just how contested every inch of terrain was, and how uncertain the outcome, as the Freedom Riders pressed forward, hundreds of them filling Southern jails."—William Grimes, The New York Times

"For those interested in understanding 20th-century America, this is an essential book.... In his dramatic and exhaustive account of the Freedom Riders, Arsenault makes a persuasive case that the idealism, faith, ingenuity and incredible courage of a relatively small group of Americans—both white and black—lit a fuse in 1961 that drew a reluctant federal government into the struggle—and also enlarged, energized and solidified (more or less) the hitherto fragmented civil rights movement.... Arsenault tells the story in wonderfully rich detail. He explains how young people, knowing the brutality and danger that others had faced, nevertheless came to replace them—in wave after wave—to ride dangerous roads, to face lawless lawmen, to withstand the fury of racist mobs, to endure the squalor and danger of Southern jails—even the dreaded Parchman Farm in Mississippi."—Roger Wilkins, Washington Post Book World

"The Freedom Rides brought onto the national stage the civil rights struggle and those who would play leading roles in it.... Arsenault chronicles the Freedom Rides with a mosaic of what may appear daunting detail. But delving into Arsenault's account, it becomes clear that his record of strategy sessions, church vigils, bloody assaults, mass arrests, political maneuverings and personal anguish captures the mood and the turmoil, the excitement and the confusion of the movement and the time."—Michael Kenney, The Boston Globe

From the Publisher