Missouri to Louisiana CORE Freedom Ride
The Missouri to Louisiana CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) Freedom Ride took place from July 8 to July 15, 1961. The Missouri to Louisiana CORE Freedom Ride took place in the middle of a larger series of Freedom Rides in the South launched between April 22 and December of that year. Four freedom riders were jailed on July 10 for testing the segregation statutes of the city's bus terminals.
Tried and convicted in Little Rock Municipal Court of offenses carrying the maximum penalty of $500 and six months in jail, the riders were offered suspended sentences if they left the state immediately. The riders initially agreed, until it was revealed that the terms of their release disallowed them from continuing on by bus to Louisiana. The riders allowed themselves to be re-arrested. One of the riders, Benjamin Cox, announced that he would "rather be dead and in my grave" than remain "a slave to segregation." Methodist minister Nat R. Griswold argued for their release in meetings with city officials, and contacted the federal Attorney General's Office about the arrests. Thirteen local businessmen gathered at First National Bank to discuss the predicament facing the city. The businessmen agreed with the position of the City of Little Rock, but argued persuasively for a reassessment of the case. The freedom riders were released on July 14 and allowed to continue their travels into Louisiana.
The incident is sometimes called the "Second Little Rock Crisis." Following the freedom rider incident and local sit-ins a coalition of local physicians banded together to form a Council on Community Affairs (COCA). The founders of COCA were William H. Townsend, Maurice A. Jackson, Garman P. Freeman, and Evangeline Upshur. COCA was modeled after the Arkansas Council on Human Relations. On March 8, 1962, COCA filed suit against the city in U.S. District Court to force desegregation of public parks and other public facilities. By the end of 1963 most public facilities in Little Rock had been peacefully desegregated.
References
Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Oxford University Press, 2006), 319, 377.
