On the morning of May 24, 1961, a Greyhound bus pulled into the Jackson Greyhound station in Mississippi carrying a group of civil rights activists who had come to test a landmark federal ruling. By the end of that day, 27 people had been arrested for "disturbing the peace" — the first wave of what would become a summer-long campaign that would ultimately see more than 300 Freedom Riders arrested in Mississippi as subsequent buses continued to arrive. The arrests marked the point at which the Freedom Riders' campaign became impossible to ignore, drawing national attention to the gap between federal law and Southern enforcement, and setting the stage for federal intervention that would eventually desegregate interstate bus travel across the South.
The 1961 Freedom Rides were originally conceived and organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), with its National Director James Farmer planning the initial campaign. The first 13 riders departed Washington on May 4 under CORE's sponsorship. When that initial group was stopped — their buses firebombed in Anniston, Alabama and riders beaten in Birmingham — Nashville student activists from SNCC, led by Diane Nash, stepped in to continue the rides, organizing fresh waves of riders to board the buses and keep the campaign alive. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had not originally planned the rides, but its Nashville student chapter provided the critical reinforcements that prevented the campaign from stalling after the Alabama violence.
By May 1961, the Supreme Court's 1960 decision in Boynton v. Virginia had already ruled that segregated interstate bus travel was illegal. Southern states were openly refusing to enforce the federal ruling. Riders knew they were walking into coordinated violence and were prepared to accept it.