Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice

• By: Raymond Arsenault
• Format: Hardcover, 640 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Usually ships in: 2 to 5 business days
• ISBN: 0195136748

Author Raymond Arsenault offers a meticulously researched and grippingly written account of the Freedom Riders, one of the most compelling chapters in the history of civil rights.

Arsenault recounts how in 1961, emboldened by federal rulings that declared segregated transit unconstitutional, a group of volunteers -- blacks and whites -- traveled together from Washington DC through the Deep South, defying Jim Crow laws in buses and terminals, putting their bodies and their lives on the line for racial justice.

The book paints a harrowing account of the outpouring of hatred and violence that greeted the Freedom Riders in Alabama and Mississippi.