“A compelling, spellbinding examination of a pivotal event in civil rights history . . . a highly readable and dramatic account of a major turning point.” —Journal of African-American History Black 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. 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, 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.

From the 1960 John F. Kennedy presidential campaign to the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the Department of Justice worked tirelessly to change the climate of civil rights in the nation. This book explores how the Kennedy brothers and leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis and James Meredith, among others, pushed for change at a critical time. Through an analysis of White House memoranda, speeches, telephone conversations and recorded discussions as well as secondary sources, this study explores Robert Kennedy's role in key events of the civil rights movement, which include the Freedom Rides in 1961, the Ole Miss crisis in 1962 and the Birmingham campaign and March on Washington in 1963. The combined efforts of the Kennedys and these leaders helped change the atmosphere in the nation to one of acceptance and opportunity for African Americans and other minorities.