The Reverse Freedom Rides

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Southern segregationists behind the reverse freedom rides like to pretend they were just doing a favor to African Americans who had already been wanting to head north. Gabriela Emmanuel explored the history of one family in particular, a single mother in Arkansas who had recently lost her welfare benefits. Ms. Williams was raising 11 children on her own. Above the fireplace in her three room home, she hung three portraits, Martin Luther King's Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. Lila Mae asked the bus driver about half an hour before getting to Hyannis to pull over so she could put her finest clothes on.

As conservative governors try to score political points by depositing busloads and planeloads of migrants in liberal cities, it can seem like an unprecedented exercise in cruelty. But it’s a page ripped from an earlier playbook in U.S. politics, one that was forgotten for decades for a very good reason. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson revisit the racist Reverse Freedom Rides of the 1960s.

Featuring:

Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson, Michael and Denise ‘68 Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, author of Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, and co-host of the podcast This Day in Esoteric Political History.

WBUR reporter Gabrielle Emanuel, who has done groundbreaking reporting on the Reverse Freedom Rides.

Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.