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This piece is to accompany The Freedom RidersForty years ago, a dozen or so friends decided to test a new ruling that banned the forced separation of whites and blacks in interstate travel. They became known as Freedom Riders, and they paved the way for the civil rights struggle. John Lewis joined the original rides. He is now a Congressman from Georgia. Well, today they're retracing their steps from the spring of '61.

This piece is to accompany The Freedom Riders video and lesson. In 1961, the Civil Rights Movement took another strategic turn. A small group of activists, both black and white, calling themselves the Freedom Riders, decided to travel by bus through the Deep South, where segregation in bus facilities wasn’t just the custom, it was the law, and where the simple act of boarding a bus was enough to put one’s life on the line.