JFK Offered Protection To The “Freedom Riders”
The “Freedom Riders,” civil rights activists who traveled via bus into the segregated South, were under attack by bigots and protesters often. In 1961, President Kennedy risked his political stance once more by sending U.S. Marshals to offer protection to the riders at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. An angry mob of whites attempted to burn the building, beat back by the president’s forces.
