Two months after Kennedy took office, C.O.R.E., under the
leadership of James Farmer, began an intensive campaign,
involving "freedom rides." Scores ind scores of whites and blacks
were recruited from Northern cities and sent throughout the South
to test the state of desegregation of travel facilities as well
as of waiting rooms and restaurants. As the campaign reached a
climax, Attorney General Robert Kennedy became annoyed with its
intensity. Apparently, he had hoped that the direct actionists
would wait for the new Administration to take the lead in Civil
Rights. Instead, they chose to try to make the new Administration
live up to the image which it had projected. Kennedy requested a
cooling-off period, but the freedom riders would not listen. But
when the freedom riders were attacked in Montgomery, Alabama,
without receiving adequate local police protection, Kennedy sent
six hundred federal marshals to escort them on the rest of their
pilgrimage.
The year 1963 was a target date for the Civil Rights Movement.
It was the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the
Movement adopted the motto, "free in '63.
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