2/12/2024 0 Comments Janie forsyth mckinney dom riders![]() You couldn’t drink out of the same water fountain, much less get on the ground with people and touch them and give them water. Though she considered her actions small and insignificant at the time, in the decades since McKinney’s story has become legend, a ray of hope in the middle of one of the darkest moments in American history. Her trance-like state was a blessing in disguise–the bucket was too heavy to carry completely full and she needed to make a lot of trips to the faucet. ![]() Grabbing a bucket from inside her house, she took water and cups to badly burned Freedom Riders caught in the middle of the fray, still choking on smoke. I was just gonna watch, I didn’t intend to go out into it!”īut McKinney, in what she describes now as an out-of-body experience, reacted. “I was just watching, horrified, just wondering what in the heck was going on. “It was a Sunday afternoon, Mother’s Day, and everybody was home from church,” said McKinney, now 68. Watching it all from her front doorstep was 12-year-old Janie Forsyth McKinney ’70. An explosion inside forced them to back off, giving the passengers inside a chance to escape, but they were met with slurs and fists as soon as they fled. Surrounding the bus, the mob held the doors closed and threw an incendiary device through a broken window, filling the bus full of smoke. The driver managed to steer them free, but the bus was chased by a convoy of cars driving on rims, he bailed in front of Forsyth & Son Grocery to flee on foot. On the way to Birmingham they were stopped just outside Anniston by a mob of angry white men.Įnraged by the Freedom Riders’ mission, they proceeded to attack the bus with pipes and boards, breaking windows and slashing tires. for their inaugural mission to protest segregated busing practices in Southern states. One Sunday afternoon May 21, 1961, 13 ‘Freedom Riders’ boarded a Greyhound Bus in Washington D.C. ![]() Virginia granted them the legal right to buy tickets for buses and sit where they’d like, but all were aware they would face violence and vitriol in the fight to end white supremacy. The 1960 Supreme Court Decision Boynton v. In 1961, Civil Rights activists organized by the Congress of Racial Equality rode interstate buses deep into the heart of segregated America to challenge local laws and customs that denied ordinary citizens basic freedoms because of the color of their skin. They endured beatings, bombings, harassment and imprisonment-but they changed the Civil Rights Movement and demonstrated the power of individual actions to transform the nation.
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