On the Move: Stories of African American Migration and Mobility: Journey of Reconciliation
Journey of Reconciliation
Whether it is the busing of African American children to schools outside their neighborhood or the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, buses have consistently been a flashpoint in the struggle for equality in the United States. In 1947, the two-week Journey of Reconciliation by sixteen people – eight African American and eight white – to see if the Southern states were honoring the federal law against segregated seating on interstate travel led to significant arrests in Chapel Hill. Their methods would inspire the next generation of activists who conducted the Freedom Rides of the 1960’s.
Exhibit materials
We Challenged JIM CROW: a Report on the Journey of Reconciliation, April 19-23, 1947 by George Houser and Bayard Rustin, Congress of Racial Equality, 1947
In 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) partnered with the American Friends Service Committee and Fellowship of Reconciliation to organize the Journey of Reconciliation. This pamphlet, produced by CORE, describes the full scope of their activities designed to see if the legislation prohibiting interstate segregation on buses was working effectively. The pamphlet includes a short description of what happened at each stop, including the especially violent encounter in Chapel Hill, NC.
Letter from Charles Miles Jones to a New York Times journalist, 1947
Charles Miles Jones was a minister at the Presbyterian Church of Chapel Hill. He hosted the riders and gave them safe harbor during their time in Chapel Hill. After the arrests at the Chapel Hill bus station, Jones bailed the riders out of jail and drove them to Greensboro to continue the Journey of Reconciliation. In this letter, Jones told a New York Times reporter how his family had been terrorized in their home, receiving violent letters and phone calls throughout the time he spent with the protestors in Chapel Hill.
The collection includes correspondence, church documents and publications, clippings, and other items reflecting Charles Miles Jones's work as a Presbyterian minister and concern for civil rights. Materials generally focus on his public rather than personal life with a special emphasis on the 1952-1953 investigation of his Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church ministry.
Photograph of taxi drivers in front of the Trailways bus station, Chapel Hill, 1940s
The Trailways bus station, built in 1946 with two separate entrances for Black and white patrons, was located at 311 West Franklin Street (the current site of the Franklin Hotel). The white taxi drivers that normally congregated around the bus station were not pleased to see a coalition of people challenge racial segregation on a bus in their community. As four protestors were being escorted off the bus by police, a white taxi driver struck James Peck, a white rider, in the head.
Bayard Morgan Wootten Photographic Collection, circa 1870-1988 (P0011)
A report on twenty-two days on the chain gang at Roxboro, North Carolina by Call Number: VC365 R97rPublication Date: 1949One of the more famous riders in the Journey of Reconciliation was Bayard Rustin. Rustin was a Civil Rights icon who was politically affiliated with A. Philip Randolph and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The 1947 “Journey of Reconciliation” is seen as a precursor to the Freedom Rides of the 1960s. When Rustin was convicted for not obeying segregation laws, he had to return to North Carolina to serve out his sentence on a segregated chain gang in Roxboro. Rustin’s accounts of his time on a chain gang shed light on the terrible conditions for Black prisoners and signaled the enormous challenges that lay ahead in the struggle for equal rights. From the North Carolina Collection
Additional resources
Freedom's Main Line by Call Number: E185.61 .C295 2009ISBN: 9780813125114Publication Date: 2008-12-18Black Americans in the Jim Crow South could not escape the grim reality of racial segregation, whether enforced by law or by custom. In Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides, author Derek Charles Catsam shows that courtrooms, classrooms, and cemeteries were not the only front lines in African Americans' prolonged struggle for basic civil rights. Buses, trains, and other modes of public transportation provided the perfect means for civil rights activists to protest the second-class citizenship of African Americans, bringing the reality of the violence of segregation into the consciousness of America and the world. In 1947, nearly a decade before the Supreme Court voided school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, sixteen black and white activists embarked on a four-state bus tour, called the Journey of Reconciliation, to challenge discrimination in busing and other forms of public transportation. Although the Journey drew little national attention, it set the stage for the more timely and influential 1961 Freedom Rides. After the Supreme Court's 1960 ruling in Boynton v. Virginia that segregated public transportation violated the Interstate Commerce Act, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and other civil rights groups organized the Freedom Rides to test the enforcement of the ruling in buses and bus terminals across the South. Their goal was simple: "to make bus desegregation," as a CORE press release put it, "a reality instead of merely an approved legal doctrine." Freedom's Main Line argues that the Freedom Rides, a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, were a logical, natural evolution of such earlier efforts as the Journey of Reconciliation, their organizers following models provided by previous challenges to segregation and relying on the principles of nonviolence so common in the larger movement. The impact of the Freedom Rides, however, was unprecedented, fixing the issue of civil rights in the national consciousness. Later activists were often dubbed Freedom Riders even if they never set foot on a bus. With challenges to segregated transportation as his point of departure, Catsam chronicles black Americans' long journey toward increased civil rights. Freedom's Main Line tells the story of bold incursions into the heart of institutional discrimination, journeys undertaken by heroic individuals who forced racial injustice into the national and international spotlight and helped pave the way for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.- The social front ... journey of reconciliation by Call Number: Cp326 F53sPublication Date: 1947Detached from: Events and trends in race relations : a monthly summary. Vol. 4, no. 10 (May 1947).
"During the period April 9 to April 23, an interracial group under the auspices of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Congress of Racial Equality toured several of the states of the upper South testing and observing the effect of the Irene Morgan decision ... upon segregation practices on interstate carriers ..."--P. 299. 
The Road South by Call Number: E185.61 .H715 2018ISBN: 9780817319809Publication Date: 2018-05-01Revisits the inspiring and heroic stories of the Freedom Riders, through their own words. In May 1961, despite multiple Supreme Court rulings, segregation remained alive and well within the system of interstate travel. All across the American South, interstate buses as well as their travel facilities were divided racially. This blatant disregard for law and morality spurred the Congress of Racial Equality to send thirteen individuals--seven black, six white--on a harrowing bus trip throughout the South as a sign of protest. These original riders were met with disapproval, arrests and violence along the way, but that did not stop the movement. That summer, more than four hundred Freedom Riders continued their journey--many of them concluding their ride at Mississippi's notorious Parchman Farm, where they endured further abuses and indignities. As a result of the riders sacrifice, by November of 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission finally put an end to interstate commerce segregation, and in the process, elevated the riders to become a source of inspiration for other civil rights campaigns such as voter registration rights and school desegregation. While much has been written on the Freedom Rides, far less has been published about the individual riders. Join award-winning author B. J. Hollars as he sets out on his own journey to meet them, retracing the historic route and learning the stories of as many surviving riders as he could. The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders offers an intimate look into the lives and legacies of the riders. Throughout the book these civil rights veterans' poignant, personal stories offer timely insights into America's racial past and hopeful future. Weaving the past with the present, Hollars aims to demystify the legendary journey, while also confronting more modern concerns related to race in America. The Road South is part memoir and part research-based journalism. It transcends the traditional textbook version of this historical journey to highlight the fascinating stories of the many riders--both black and white--who risked their lives to move the country forward.
