The interstate bus rides to challenge segregation were known as what?

• A. Civil Rights Act of 1964
• B. March on Washington
• C. Freedom Rides
• D. Brown v. Board of Education

Answer: (C)

Nonviolent direct action to desegregate interstate travel is what this question is about. In 1960–61, members of CORE and others organized interracial groups to ride buses into the segregated South and use facilities at bus terminals, testing and challenging the legal segregation that still applied to interstate transportation. These Freedom Rides aimed to enforce Supreme Court rulings that segregation on interstate buses was unconstitutional and to provoke federal enforcement when local authorities did not protect the riders. The visibility and pressure from the rides helped spur federal action and broader civil rights momentum. The other options refer to different events or rulings: a later Civil Rights Act that outlawed segregation in many public spaces, the March on Washington as a separate 1963 demonstration, and Brown v. Board of Education as the 1954 decision ending legal school segregation.