Into the Heart of the Beast

Four weeks earlier, on November 1, 1961, a federal ruling by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had gone into effect, mandating the desegregation of interstate travel facilities. The white residents of McComb had no interest in obeying, and now Smith-Simmons was running—being chased, in fact, by a group of white men, while young white women with babies on their hips shouted after her, “Kill the n——! Kill the n——!”

“They’re babies,” she thought as she ran. “Why are they out here?”

Smith-Simmons was one of approximately 435 people who participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides, in which hundreds of civil rights activists from the North and South put their safety on the line in order to put federal desegregation law to the test. Smith-Simmons recounted this story to Senior Historian Mark Cave for the NOLA Resistance Oral History Project, an initiative to preserve and share stories from the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement. Hers is one of 30 oral histories that anchor the new HNOC exhibition The Trail They Blazed. Smith-Simmons and dozens of other participants from the local movement of the 1950s–70s helped develop the exhibition, and their experiences—shared through video, audio, photographs, and documents such as Smith-Simmons’s handwritten notes from the Freedom Rides—guide its storytelling. It expands upon a traveling exhibition by the same name that has been hosted by sites throughout New Orleans since September 2023.

Smith-Simmons and her fellow Freedom Riders had long prepared for the menace they would face in McComb. As members of the New Orleans branch of the national Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), they had studied the principles of nonviolent direct action and read books on Mahatma Gandhi. Their training was rigorous. Once, in the middle of winter, Smith-Simmons fasted for 24 hours, sitting on the playground at St. Augustine High School through the night, forbidden to speak. This was to prepare CORE activists for stints in jail where they might be refused food or exposed to the cold for long stretches. Then there was the sit-in rehearsal. While some members “sat in” at imaginary lunch counters, others acted as the “perpetrators,” slapping them, throwing them off the chairs, calling them names. It was all about discipline, finding calm amid chaos.

Organizers were assessing who could keep their composure in the face of white retaliation. The Freedom Rides had commenced in May 1961 to test two Supreme Court decisions mandating the desegregation of interstate travel facilities, and Riders had been immediately met with violence. It was the first major domestic crisis faced by President John F. Kennedy, sworn in that January, and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. To the dismay of civil rights activists, it was not one the new administration was keen on confronting.

The first Freedom Ride had been conceived as one long interstate bus trip from Washington, DC, to New Orleans, led by CORE director James Farmer and involving seven Black and six white volunteers. At bus terminals along the way, Riders would attempt to use segregated facilities such as lunch counters and restrooms. When the group reached Rock Hill, South Carolina, 21-year-old Freedom Rider and future congressman John Lewis suffered the first of many violent assaults he and others would endure along the road. Five days later, in Anniston, Alabama, local authorities allowed a hundred-person mob led by the Ku Klux Klan to surround and firebomb a Freedom Riders bus. A second bus was boarded by Klansmen who attacked CORE organizer Jim Peck, a white man, so viciously that his head required 53 stitches. The violence continued as that bus arrived in Birmingham later that afternoon. These attacks compelled Farmer to temporarily halt the campaign, and injured Riders flew to New Orleans, where they received medical treatment and were housed by Dean Norman Francis at Xavier University and in the homes of local Black supporters. The episode gave New Orleans activists an up-close view of the risks they faced.

“My mother didn’t think I should join,” Smith-Simmons said.

In his book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, historian Raymond Arsenault cites a national Gallup poll conducted after those attacks which found that only 24 percent of Americans approved of “what the ‘Freedom Riders’ are doing”—not the mobs that were assaulting them, but the Riders themselves. The poll also found that just 27 percent of respondents agreed that sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and “other demonstrations by Negroes” would “help the Negro’s chances of being integrated in the South.”

President Kennedy offered only an equivocating statement in the wake of the attacks, asking state authorities to “exercise their lawful authority to prevent any further outbreaks of violence” but also admonishing the Freedom Riders by stating, “I would also hope that any persons, whether a citizen of Alabama or a visitor there, would refrain from any action which would in any way tend to provoke further outbreaks.” His brother, the attorney general, was pressured to petition the ICC to announce clear regulations on desegregation in interstate facilities. Compliance, however, remained a problem.

As the Freedom Rides dominated headlines, more young people signed up and poured into the Deep South. The growing presence of white activists added more pressure on the Kennedy Administration. Through the summer, hundreds of Freedom Riders would be arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, crowding into the notorious Parchman Penitentiary for weeks at a time. Many had been trained by CORE in New Orleans. In a WDSU news clip featured in The Trail They Blazed, a reporter asks Carol Silver, a white Freedom Rider from Massachusetts who had been jailed at Parchman, what she hoped they would accomplish. She replies, “It’s going to demonstrate to the state of Mississippi that we do not intend to cease direct action and that the people of the South, the people of the North, all of the citizens—the free citizens of the United States, do not intend to let this intolerable, intolerable situation of segregation continue without trying to do something.”

That spirit of persistence carried on, even after November 1, 1961, when the ICC finally implemented the clear anti-segregation regulations requested by the attorney general months earlier. At this point, Smith-Simmons and her fellow New Orleans Freedom Riders began preparing for a trip to McComb—“the heart of the beast,” according to the historian Arsenault—intending to put the ICC decree to the test. “We were just young people ready to go,” Smith-Simmons said.

All 23 years old or younger, the five Black Freedom Riders set out from the New Orleans Greyhound station on the bus to McComb prepared for anything. CORE carefully planned every detail of the trip. Per their training, Riders wore their Sunday best, including heels for the women. Department of Justice attorneys were made aware of their plans and viewed it as a crucial test case. The McComb police knew they were coming, and the mayor of McComb went so far as to issue a public statement urging compliance with federal law. No matter what went down, the Riders had been trained to stay calm—and look out for each other.

 After arriving at the McComb bus terminal, Smith-Simmons, Raymond, Alice Thompson, and Thomas Valentine sat at its lunch counter while the fifth Black Rider, Jerome Smith, went to purchase return tickets.

 “Greyhound does not own this terminal—please leave!” the manager screamed at them.

 “May I have a cup of coffee, please?”

 More screaming. Raymond asked a second time. After the white man assaulted him with the mug, Jerome Smith signaled for the women to go to the waiting room—a gesture that drew the attention of more white men who came over and beat him with brass knuckles. He put his hands behind his neck and fell to a fetal position as he’d been trained, even as they continued their attack.

In the chaos that ensued, Smith-Simmons got separated from the group. She ran to the “Colored” section of the terminal. A group of Black McComb citizens encircled her, shielding her from the mob, but eventually she had to keep running. “You’re going to walk out of this crowd and walk up the hill, like you’re going to clean in Miss Ann’s kitchen,” she told herself, “and then when you get out of sight you’re going to run like hell.”

As she ran, she thought she heard someone from the mob cry, “Dodie!” How did they know her name? A truck approached her. “Dodie!” She kept running—but the truck caught up.

The shouts, to her relief, were coming from Smith, riding in the passenger seat of the truck, which was driven by a local Black man. The others were with them, too. She got in, and they escaped to a café in the Black section of town. While a doctor there treated their injuries, Smith instructed Smith-Simmons, “Get Bobby Kennedy on the phone.” He dictated a phone number to her. Skeptically, she went to the pay phone and dialed. The attorney general picked up.

“My name is Doratha Smith and I’m calling for Jerome Smith.”

“I’m aware of the situation,” Kennedy told her. “There are FBI agents out front waiting to take you back to New Orleans.”

“Oh, no, they won’t,” Dodie said. “We’re going back to New Orleans the way we came—by bus.”

Back at the bus terminal, the angry crowd had doubled in size, and police were everywhere. But the Riders weren’t deterred. They flagged down the bus on the highway, and did just that. A hundred miles to home. A new trail blazed.