Journey of Reconciliation - Chapel Hill, North Carolina

"Journey of Reconciliation" - Freedom Riders, SE Corner of Columbia St. and Rosemary St., Chapel Hill, NC

One of our biggest events in recent history (as in within our parents' lifetimes) was the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1965. It was, back then, a pretty huge piece of legislation, both in scope and controversy; almost in similar ways to how the Affordable Care Act has affected the economy and the health industry. But there were several events that had led up to that one moment where President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed the bill into law. All sorts of groups conducted sit-in campaigns, non-violence movements, and pushed the issue forward in the South, where legal racism and segregation were most pervasive. But before all of this, there was the "Journey of Reconciliation."

The Journey of Reconciliation was, what many argued, a prototype. It aimed to test the amount of racial segregation in the South, using the Upper South as its first step into the environment. In 1946, the Supreme Court (yes, SCOTUS) had just ruled that a Virginian law requiring racial segregation on interstate motor carriers is unconstitutional. Their reasoning was that the segregation laws unnecessarily unfairly burdened the carriers with the issue, which was inconsistently applied across the country (the ruling also implied that Irene Morgan, the plaintiff who refused to surrender her seat in the whites' section, was a proper person to challenge the statute). As a result, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to test the new ruling; eight white men and eight black men boarded a Greyhound bus headed for Virginia, North Carolina, and other states.

Now this decision was coming out when American soldiers, white and black, were coming home from fighting for freedom in the European and Pacific theaters. So there was some resistance to segregated transportation across the country in addition to Irene's. But just because the Supreme Court laid down the law of the land (one of the first to chip away at Jim Crow laws). That's where this Journey comes in: the riders went forth to see how well the law would be enforced in the South.

Route and Timeline for the Journey of Reconciliation. From Fellowship for Reconciliation.

The sign commemorates their arrival to Chapel Hill, which was not exactly welcome at the time. White taxidrivers attacked the bus when it pulled into the station, which was not even half-a-block from where the sign stands now. A handful got arrested, and even a white minister who took them in was threatened. The NAACP made a loose promise to represent them in court after their arrests, but didn't follow through because the lawyers were frustrated with their behavior. The riders apparently were presumptuous about their success, and managed to lose their bus tickets that would've provided evidence for them. So the group of lawyers (which included Thurgood Marshall) got frustrated with their behavior and they ended up on the chain gangs for 30 days.

There was also a women's version of the Journey planned, but those got thrown out the window when the men faced numerous arrests and lost their cases in court. Such a journey would not be replicated until the Freedom Riders rode through the South in the 1960s.