1. Findings The Congress finds the following: (1) In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled in Boynton v. Virginia that segregated bus and rail stations were unconstitutional. (2) The rigid system of racial segregation that prevailed in the United States during the 1960s did not permit a Black person to sit next to a White person on any bus traveling through interstate commerce and in most locations in the South. Bus stations had Whites Only waiting areas and Blacks were not permitted to wait in those areas despite the Supreme Court making it the law of the land. (3) The Freedom Riders, with the intent to end segregation in public transportation throughout the South, paved the way for full racial integration of the United States transit system. They overcame prejudice, discrimination, and violence. They sparked a movement that changed our Nation. (4) The Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) selected thirteen volunteers for nonviolent response training to join in the Freedom Rides from Washington, DC, to New Orleans, LA. The Freedom Riders used their strategies of nonviolence throughout the South to challenge the region’s Jim Crow laws directly and enforce the Supreme Court decision in Boynton. (5) On the morning of May 4, 1961, the Freedom Riders, comprised of seven Blacks and six Whites, boarded two buses, with Blacks and Whites seated together. Those thirteen Freedom Riders were: Genevieve Hughes Houghton, Charles Person, Hank Thomas, John Lewis, Edward Blankenheim, James Farmer, Walter Bergman, Frances Bergman, Joseph Perkins, Jimmy McDonald, Mae Francis Moultrie, Benjamin Elton Cox, and Albert Bigelow. Most segregated States considered even this level of integration a crime. At various stops along the way, the Freedom Riders would enter areas designated Whites and Colored and would eat together at segregated lunch counters to defy local laws. (6) Initially, the Freedom Riders had encountered only minor clashes until a stop in South Carolina. In Rock Hill, an angry mob severely beat John Lewis, late Congressman from