From Gordon R. Carey
Author: Carey, Gordon R.
Date: May 8, 1961
Location: New York, N.Y.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Freedom Rides
Details
On 4 May 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides, an interracial group traveling by bus together to challenge segregation on interstate buses and in transportation terminals.1 Below Carey confirms King’s attendance at a public meeting and dinner with the freedom riders when the group passes through Atlanta on 13 May. The public meeting was canceled, but King met the riders for dinner at Paschal’s restaurant.2
dr. martin luther king jr,
ebenezer baptist church
407 auburn ave northeast atla
this confirms your presence at freedom ride public meeting as discussed by telephone and letter3 meeting is 8pm may 13 warren memorial methodist church would also appreciate your meeting with freedom riders privately for dinner about 6pm we will contact you again about dinner meeting. your kind cooperation deeply and sincerely appreciated
gordon r carey
1. The group planned to ride buses from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, Louisiana, arriving on 17 May, the seventh anniversary of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision (CORE, “Freedom Ride Itinerary,” 24 April 1961). In 1947, CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) organized the Journey of Reconciliation, an interracial bus ride throughout the upper South to test compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946), which outlawed segregation on interstate buses. In 1960 the Supreme Court extended the ruling in Morgan to include public facilities such as waiting rooms, restaurants, and restrooms in bus and train terminals (Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 [1960]). Several weeks before the start of the campaign, CORE field director Gordon Carey asked for SCLC’s “wholehearted support” for the rides and asked King if he knew of any potential recruits “experienced in nonviolent direct action and willing to accept violence and a jail term if they occur” (Carey to King, 31 March 1961).
2. “‘Freedom Riders’ Arrive in City,” Atlanta Daily World, 14 May 1961. In his autobiography, Jet reporter Simeon Booker, who was riding the buses for a series of articles about the campaign, wrote that King took him aside at the dinner and said, “I’ve gotten word you won’t reach Birmingham. They’re going to waylay you” (Simeon Booker and Carol McCabe Booker, Shocking the Conscience: A Reporter’s Account of the Civil Rights Movement [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013], p. 189).
3. Carey to Dora E. McDonald, 18 April 1961.
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Boston University, Boston, Mass.