Monthly Archives: May 2026

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May 17 – Brown V Board of Education


To commemorate the historic occasion, Color Of Change is proud to present a special episode of our Black History Now Live Series in partnership with the National Education Association. Join us on Friday, May 17, 2024, for the premiere of “Educating for Equity: Brown v Board of Education 70 Years Later,” a virtual commemoration, as we delve into the legacy of this groundbreaking case and its relevance to present-day challenges facing our public education system.

The episode will feature interviews with esteemed intergenerational thought leaders, including:

  • Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change
  • Rebecca S. “Becky” Pringle, president of the National Education Association
  • Marley Dias, student activist, author, NEA ambassador and founder of #1000BlackGirlBooks
  • George “Conscious” Lee, educator, content creator and host of the “Black History, For Real” podcast
  • Alice O’Brien, general counsel of the National Education Association
  • Erin Freeman, a public school educator based in Florida

The episode explores the critical intersections of race, and education, how the end of affirmative action is impacting education and how we can continue to advocate for the protection of public education and the inclusion of Black history in our classrooms.

Tune into Color Of Change’s YouTube and Facebook channels on Friday, May, 17, at noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT to watch the premiere of “Educating for Equity: Brown v Board of Education 70 Years Later” as we honor the legacy of the landmark decision and look at what’s ahead.



Together, through our ongoing partnerships with organizations like the
National Education Association, Color Of Change has demonstrated our commitment
to defending Black history and education and trained 1,100 local leaders across
the country in the last seven months.

Working together, we can build power to make positive changes in our education
system that our communities want and our children deserve.



Until Justice Is Real,
The Color Of Change Team
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History 1961 – A bus carrying Freedom Riders was bombed and burned in Alabama


In memory of… a repost


Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Freedom Riders tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters at bus stations in Alabama, South Carolina and other Southern states. The groups were confronted by arresting police officers—as well as horrific violence from white protestors—along their routes, but also drew international attention to their cause.

The 1961 Freedom Rides, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), were modeled after the organization’s 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. During the 1947 action, African-American and white bus riders tested the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Morgan v. Virginia that found segregated bus seating was unconstitutional.

The 1961 Freedom Rides sought to test a 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals, was unconstitutional as well. A big difference between the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation and the 1961 Freedom Rides was the inclusion of women in the later initiative.

In both actions, black riders traveled to the American South—where segregation continued to occur—and attempted to use whites-only restrooms, lunch counters and waiting rooms.

The original group of 13 Freedom Riders—seven African Americans and six whites—left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus on May 4, 1961. Their plan was to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 17 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of the nation’s public schools was unconstitutional.

The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina, drawing little public notice. The first violent incident occurred on May 12 in Rock Hill, South Carolina. John Lewis, an African-American seminary student and member of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), white Freedom Rider and World War II veteran Albert Bigelow, and another African-American rider were viciously attacked as they attempted to enter a whites-only waiting area.

The next day, the group reached Atlanta, Georgia, where some of the riders split off onto a Trailways bus.

On May 14, 1961, the Greyhound bus was the first to arrive in Anniston, Alabama. There, an angry mob of about 200 white people surrounded the bus, causing the driver to continue past the bus station.

The mob followed the bus in automobiles, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. The Freedom Riders escaped the bus as it burst into flames, only to be brutally beaten by members of the surrounding mob.

The second bus, a Trailways vehicle, traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, and those riders were also beaten by an angry white mob, many of whom brandished metal pipes. Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connorstated that, although he knew the Freedom Riders were arriving and violence awaited them, he posted no police protection at the station because it was Mother’s Day.

Photographs of the burning Greyhound bus and the bloodied riders appeared on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country and around the world the next day, drawing international attention to the Freedom Riders’ cause and the state of race relations in the United States.

Following the widespread violence, CORE officials could not find a bus driver who would agree to transport the integrated group, and they decided to abandon the Freedom Rides. However, Diane Nash, an activist from the SNCC, organized a group of 10 students from Nashville, Tennessee, to continue the rides.

U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, brother of President John F. Kennedy, began negotiating with Governor John Patterson of Alabama and the bus companies to secure a driver and state protection for the new group of Freedom Riders. The rides finally resumed, on a Greyhound bus departing Birmingham under police escort, on May 20.

The violence toward the Freedom Riders was not quelled—rather, the police abandoned the Greyhound bus just before it arrived at the Montgomery, Alabama, terminal, where a white mob attacked the riders with baseball bats and clubs as they disembarked. Attorney General Kennedy sent 600 federal marshals to the city to stop the violence.

The following night, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. led a service at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, which was attended by more than one thousand supporters of the Freedom Riders. A riot ensued outside the church, and King called Robert Kennedy to ask for protection.

Kennedy summoned the federal marshals, who used teargas to disperse the white mob. Patterson declared martial law in the city and dispatched the National Guard to restore order.

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders departed Montgomery for Jackson, Mississippi. There, several hundred supporters greeted the riders. However, those who attempted to use the whites-only facilities were arrested for trespassing and taken to the maximum-security penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi.

During their hearings, the judge turned and looked at the wall rather than listen to the Freedom Riders’ defense—as had been the case when sit-in participants were arrested for protesting segregated lunch counters in Tennessee. He sentenced the riders to 30 days in jail.

Attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights organization, appealed the convictions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed them.

The violence and arrests continued to garner national and international attention, and drew hundreds of new Freedom Riders to the cause.

The rides continued over the next several months, and in the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals.

history.com

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history… may 15


1602 – Cape Cod was discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold.

1614 – An aristocratic uprising in France ended with the treaty of St.Menehould.

1618 – Johannes Kepler discovered his harmonics law.

1702 – The War of Spanish Succession began.

1768 – Under the Treaty of Versailles, France purchased Corsica from Genoa.

1795 – Napoleon entered the Lombardian capital of Milan.

1849 – Neapolitan troops entered Palermo, and were in possession of Sicily.

1856 – Lyman Frank Baum, author of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” was born.

1862 – The U.S. Congress created the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

1911 – The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

1916 – U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.

1918 – Regular airmail service between New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, began under the direction of the Post Office Department, which later became the U.S. Postal Service.

1926 – Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth were forced down in Alaska after a four-day flight over an icecap. Ice had begun to form on the dirigible Norge.

1926 – The New York Rangers were officially granted a franchise in the NHL. The NHL also announced that Chicago and Detroit would be joining the league in November.

1930 – Ellen Church became the first female flight attendant.

1940 – Nylon stockings went on sale for the first time in the U.S.

1941 – Joe DiMaggio began his historic major league baseball hitting streak of 56 games.

1942 – Gasoline rationing began in the U.S. The limit was 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.

1948 – Israel was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon only hours after declaring its independence.

1951 – AT&T became the first corporation to have one million stockholders.

1957 – Britain dropped its first hydrogen bomb on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.

1958 – Sputnik III, the first space laboratory, was launched in the Soviet Union.

1963 – The last Project Mercury space flight was launched.

1964 – The Smothers Brothers, Dick and Tom, gave their first concert in Carnegie Hall in New York City.

1970 – U.S. President Nixon appointed America’s first two female generals.

1970 – Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, were killed when police opened fire during student protests.

1972 – Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, MD while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. Wallace was paralyzed by the shot.

1975 – The merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.

1980 – The first transcontinental balloon crossing of the United States took place.

1983 – In Boston,MA, the Madison Hotel was destroyed by implosion.

1988 – The Soviet Union began their withdrawal of its 115,000 troops from Afghanistan. Soviet forces had been there for more than eight years.

1990 – Vincent Van Gogh’s “Portrait of Doctor Gachet” was sold for $82.5 million. The sale set a new world record.

1997 – The Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia’s orbiting Mir station.

1999 – The Russian parliament was unable a attain enough votes to impeach President Boris Yeltsin.

2014 – The National September 11 Memorial Museum was dedicated in New York City.

on-this-day.com

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1961 – A bus carrying Freedom Riders was bombed and burned in Alabama.


In Memory

May 14, 1961, Anniston, Alabama, — Passengers of this smoking Greyhound bus, some of the members of the “Freedom Riders,” a group sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), sit on the ground after the bus was set afire 5/14, by a mob of Caucasians who followed the bus from the city. The mob met the bus at the terminal, stoned it & slashed the tires, then followed the bus from town. BPA2# 47. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS