Follow the route of the Freedom Rides with Raymond Arsenault author of Freedom Riders

Click the interactive Freedom Riders Book Tour map
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In 1961, emboldened by federal rulings that declared segregated transit unconstitutional, a group of volunteers—blacks and whites—traveled together from Washington DC through the Deep South. Ray Arsenault in Freedom Riders tells the harrowing story of how these brave men and women defied Jim Crow laws in buses and terminals and put their bodies and their lives on the line for racial justice.

An outpouring of hatred and violence greeted the Freedom Riders in Alabama and Mississippi. One bus was disabled by Ku Klux Klansmen and then firebombed. In Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, mobs of white supremacists swarmed the bus stations and battered the riders with clubs and fists while local police refused to intervene. The mayhem in Montgomery was captured by news photographers and shocked the nation, sparking a crisis in the Kennedy administration.

With colorful portraits of key actors in the saga like Jim Farmer, John Lewis, Diane Nash, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Martin Luther King, Jr, the courage, fear, and agonizing choices made by the Freedom Riders run through the story like an electric current.

The saga of the Freedom Rides is an improbable, almost unbelievable story. In the course of six months, some four hundred and fifty Freedom Riders expanded the realm of the possible in American politics, redefining the limits of dissent and setting the stage in the years to come for the 1963 Birmingham demonstrations, Freedom Summer and the Selma-to-Montgomery March. With characters and plot lines rivaling those of the most imaginative fiction, this is a tale of heroic sacrifice and unexpected triumph.

Read an excerpt from the book at the Oxford University Press Blog

Click here to hear Raymond Arsenault on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

Pin image courtesy of the Civil Rights Movement Veterans website http://www.crmvet.org
Bus photo courtesy of the Birmingham Public Library.

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Buy the book

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Get on the bus!
Freedom Riders 2006 Book Tour Dates and Venues

• February 6, 2006 - New York, NY - 6:00 PM
  HUE-MAN BOOKSTORE
  2319 Fredrick Douglass Blvd. New York, NY 10027
  
  
• February 7, 2006 - New York, NY - 7:30 PM
  BARNES & NOBLE
  396 Avenue of the Americas (at 8th Street) New York, NY 10011
  
  
• February 8, 2006 - Philadelphia, PA - 7:00 PM
  FRIENDS SELECT SCHOOL
  1651 Ben Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, PA 19103
  
  
• February 9, 2006 - Washington, DC - 7:00 PM
  POLITICS & PROSE BOOKSTORE
  5015 Conneticut Ave., NW Washington, DC 20008
  
  
• February 10, 2006 - Raleigh, NC - 7:00 PM
  QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS & MUSIC
  3522 Wade Ave. Raleigh, NC 27607
  
  
• February 11, 2006 - Nashville, TN - Time TBA
  NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY
  
  
• February 17, 2006 - Tampa, FL - 7:00 PM
  INKWOOD BOOKS
  216 South Armenia Avenue Tampa, FL 33609
  
  
• February 18, 2006 - St. Petersburg, FL - 2:00 PM
  HASLAM’S BOOKSTORE
  2025 Central Avenue St. Petersburg, Florida 33713
  
  
• February 28, 2006 - Atlanta, GA - 6:00 PM
  SHRINE OF THE BLACK MADONNA
  946 R.D. Abernathy Blvd. SW Atlanta, Georgia 30310
  
  
• March 3, 2005 - Oxford, MS - 5:00 PM
  SQUARE BOOKS
  160 Court House Square Oxford, MS 38655