Route 40 Freedom Ride

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Usually when Americans remember the Freedom Rides, they think of buses that traversed the deep South in the early 1960s to protest racism at bus depots and lunch counters and the like. The Freedom Riders' demonstrated that, in many southern states, local authorities were ignoring bans on segregation in interstate travel facilities. The Freedom Riders were typically young black and white activists organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), including John Lewis, a SNCC leader. The Freedom Riders were attacked by mobs of southern whites and met with horrific violence in places like Anniston, Alabama, where a bus was firebombed in May 1961.

In September 1961, CORE and the Freedom Riders turned their attention to Maryland and Delaware. A few incidents occurred over the 1961 summer that highlighted the racism in travel facilities on Route 40, the main highway between New York City and Washington D.C. before I-95 opened in 1963. Frequent travelers on the highway included African diplomats. By mid-July, at least four diplomats from Chad, Niger, Togo and Cameroon had been denied meals at Route 40 restaurants in Edgewood, Aberdeen, Havre de Grace, and other towns along the road. A Howard Johnson's in Hagerstown, MD had also denied service to a diplomat from Sierra Leone.

The incidents put Maryland's Route 40 corridor into an international spotlight as the diplomats lodged formal protests to President John F. Kennedy. Cognizant of human rights issues and gaining Cold War allies amongst newly-independent African countries, the Kennedy administration intervened by assigning a State Dept. official to improve the situation. He involved Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes in working out a solution after Ambassador to Chad Adam Malik Sow spoke out against his treatment at the Bonnie Brae Diner in Edgewood, Maryland.

In September, the Baltimore Afro-American sent a team of three black reporters dressed in diplomatic formality (one in African clothing) to a handful of restaurants where they had limited success in getting seated, mostly in dining rooms separate from the main restaurants. A December 1961 LIFE magazine article provided perspectives from the diplomats, proprietors, and customers of the restaurants in question. After the national publicity and Kennedy administration's intervention, CORE planned a Freedom Ride on Route 40 for November 11, 1961 to stage sit-ins at restaurants that barred black patrons. Before the Freedom Ride, a newly formed local group called the Human Relations Committee reached out to the Harford County commissioners to force owners of segregated restaurants to allow black customers.

In October 1961, the state launched an effort with various agencies to get the restaurant proprietors to agree to desegregate. This group was able to reach an agreement such that CORE called off a planned Freedom Ride for November since many restaurants (35) agreed to desegregate. However, subsequent CORE investigations discovered that 11 of these restaurants disregarded this pledge. CORE subsequenlty planned a Freedom Ride that took place on December 16, 1961.

On that day, Freedom Riders drove up and down Route 40 with a brochure that included CORE instructions on what to do and lists of restaurants that both had and had not desegregated. Sporadic protests had already occurred at segregated restaurants and hotels in the Baltimore area in November and December ahead of the Freedom Ride leading to over 70 arrests.

On the day of the Freedom Ride, approximately 500-700 riders in private cars stopped at various restaurants in groups where they sat down at counters and tables. They were often met by police, media, sometimes counter-demonstrators, and a mixed reception by the restaurant owners whose employees read the Trespass law to them at various points. The police arrested 14 people, black and white, mostly for violations of Maryland's Trespass Law in which patrons had to leave if read a statute in the business. A report from the Afro described a confrontational scene at the Aberdeen Restaurant (no longer existing): "50 Freedom Riders sat inside while a mob of 100 persons, including some soldiers, hurled threats and obscenities at them."

Freedom Riders returned to Route 40 a few times in 1962 with some incidents and arrests. The movement had a significant political impact. In 1963, the Maryland General Assembly and Governor Tawes collaborated to pass the Public Accommodations Law and Maryland became the only state below the Mason-Dixon law to pass a public law banning discrimination by race in restaurants and hotels. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 superseded the Maryland state law.