Ron DeSantis' racist stunt sending immigrants to blue states has historical echoes in American history because in the 1960’s "reverse freedom rides" were conducted by the White Citizens Council as they tried to defend white supremacy.
This is a part of American history many people don’t know about but maybe it should become more common knowledge.
There are way more informed people on this subject than I, so here is an article published by Esquire, an old newspaper clipping and another article on the subject to start a conversation:
Ron DeSantis Flew Immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Echoing a Racist Stunt From Exactly 60 Years Ago
In 1962, it was just a bunch of racists; this time the inhumanity comes at the hands of the state.
Written by Kate Storey
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It was 60 years ago when this corner of Massachusetts was the center of a similarly cruel stunt. It is a little-told chapter of history called in the media at the time “the Reverse Freedom Rides.” In the summer of 1962, a group of white segregationists and supremacists known as the White Citizens Council passed out leaflets and placed want ads in Southern newspapers to recruit Black families with the promise of jobs up north—and, in particular, in Hyannis, where then-President John F. Kennedy spent summers with his family. The ads read: “President Kennedy’s brother assures you a grand reception to Massachusetts. Good jobs, housing, etc. are promised.”
The deceptive and inhumane plan was a response to the heroic Freedom Rides the year before. Civil rights activists rode buses into the segregated South, and a year later the White Citizens Council sent busloads of Black riders up to the North.
"For many years, certain politicians, educators and certain religious leaders have used the white people of the South as a whipping boy, to put it mildly, to further their own ends and their political campaigns," said Amis Guthridge, one of the White Citizens Council organizers, in footage unearthed by NPR’s Gabrielle Emanuel in 2020. "We're going to find out if people like Ted Kennedy… and the Kennedys, all of them, really do have an interest in the Negro people, really do have a love for the Negro."
Many of the 53 people who arrived at Hyannis—including 33 children—were sent to the Cape Cod Community College, where they were given food and bedding collected by the Cape Cod chapter of the NAACP. “It was one of the most inhumane things I have seen in my years of social action work,” local Cape activist Margaret Mosley said in a 1994 interview.
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When busloads of families were sent to Hyannis, the White Citizens Council made sure the media covered the whole event—reporters were there waiting when the buses pulled up to Hyannis Main Street. The public cruelty was the point. And right after the plane arrived last night in Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama has spent his summers, DeSantis’s communication’s director said in her statement to FoxNews.com, "As you may know, in this past legislative session the Florida legislature appropriated $12 million to implement a program to facilitate the transport of illegal immigrants from this state consistent with federal law.”
The parallels playing out after six decades are jarring. And this time, the cruelty is state-sponsored.
The Cruel Story Behind The ‘Reverse Freedom Rides’
After three days on a Greyhound bus, Lela Mae Williams was just an hour from her destination—Hyannis, Mass.—when she asked the bus driver to pull over. She needed to change into her finest clothes. She had been promised the Kennedy family would be waiting for her.
It was late on a Wednesday afternoon, nearly 60 years ago, when that Greyhound bus from Little Rock, Ark., pulled into Hyannis. It slowed to a stop near the summer home of President John F. Kennedy and his family. When the doors opened, Lela Mae and her nine youngest children stepped onto the pavement.
Reporters’ microphones pointed at her, their cameras trained on her family. The photographs in the next day’s newspaper show Lela Mae looking immaculate. In an elegant black dress, a triple string of pearls and a white hat, she was dressed to start a new life.
“She was going to have a job, and she was going to be able to support her family,” one of Lela Mae’s daughters, Betty Williams, remembered in a recent interview. Before coming north to Massachusetts, Lela Mae had been promised a good job, good housing and a presidential welcome.
But President Kennedy was not there to meet her. And there was no job or permanent housing waiting for her in Hyannis. Instead, Lela Mae and the others were unwitting pawns in a segregationist game.
“It was one of the most inhuman things I have ever seen,” recalled Margaret Moseley, a longtime civil rights activist in Hyannis, in a televised interview a few years before her death.
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In the weeks and months to come, the Greyhound buses kept arriving, but the spectators disappeared. Ted Kennedy never showed up again. The rest of the Kennedy family never made an appearance. Only a small crew of Hyannis residents, including the civil rights activist Margaret Moseley, remained.
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