The 1947 Journey of Reconciliation was an obvious attempt to put to the test the Supreme Court’s verdict in Morgan v. Virginia, which barred segregated sitting in buses on a large scale between states. The action by two civil rights activists has been branded as suicidal and likely to result in violence with no meaningful achievements.
However, proponents were adamant about challenging the status quo that prohibits people of African descent from sitting in front of buses during interstate travel. Previously, in 1946, Wilson A. Head, a key protagonist and World War II veteran, decided to experiment on a small scale by testing the Supreme Court ruling at his level.
In Atlanta, he boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Washington, D.C. He was hounded, frightened, and taunted along the way, but he persisted in his pursuit. The cops harassed him with weapons pointing at his head at some point along the voyage in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He arrived in Washington, D.C. unhurt, having achieved the goal he had set his sights on.
Bayard Rustin was another civil rights activist who took such a perilous journey. He made the decision to travel from Louisville, Kentucky to Nashville. He chose to sit in the bus’s second row. When the bus driver ordered him to move to the back of the bus, he challenged him.
He arrived in Nashville in the same seat he had sat in when the bus departed Louisville, but unlike Head, he was beaten; municipal police detained him and took him to the police station. He insisted on his right to sit wherever he felt comfortable. They pushed him, but he wouldn’t move. According to SNCC Digital, one police officer remarked that he must have been insane to still keep his ground and send him on his way.
Rustin and Head decided to plan a bus ride on a greater scale in response to their previous experience. Rustin was the treasurer of the Congress of Racial Equality at the time, as well as the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s co-secretary of race relations.
They were adamant about establishing another precedent that desegregated interstate buses and reaffirming the Supreme Court decision. Morgan’s ruling was to be given life through the Journey of Reconciliation. They organized the voyage in accordance with Jim Crow rules. After gathering funds and conducting talks regarding the bus excursion, they decided to enlist lawyers and key opinion leaders.
Some important campaigners questioned the success of the tactics they used to convey their point. Thurgood Marshall, a prominent member of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, stated that the journey would only result in bloodshed and should be avoided. The journey, however, included white participants in order to reduce the casualty rate in the event of the unavoidable.
On April 9, 1947, the activists boarded buses from Washington, D.C. to begin the Journey of Reconciliation. They planned to visit 15 cities in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina, and were made up of eight White and eight Black men.
One of the goals was to raise awareness about the Supreme Court’s decision in the Morgan case, as well as to deal with any potential chaos that may arise while documenting any incident that may occur in order to further challenge the segregation laws.
Despite strong resistance from NAACP leaders, the bulk of the Black community supported the tour and the campaigners. During the two-week tour, 26 different locations for seating in the front row of buses were tried. Six times during the 26 tests, the group was detained. Four motorcyclists were apprehended in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and after they were freed on bond, a car of irate white guys with sticks and rocks pursued them.
The Journey of Reconciliation became one of the nonviolent methods of opposing segregation laws.