A segregationist publicity stunt spearheaded by George Singelmann of the White Citizens Council in New Orleans, the Reverse Freedom Rides program was to trick hundreds of African Americans from the South into moving north.
About 50 travelers or Freedom Reverse Riders, most of them single mothers, were given tickets to Hyannis, Mass., near the Kennedy family compound, in an attempt to embarrass then-President John F. Kennedy for his support of the civil rights movement, according to accounts.
“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, a lawyer from Arkansas who helped spearhead the Reverse Freedom Rides.
Lela Mae Williams and her children from Little Rock, Arkansas, were part of the Reverse Freedom Riders who arrived at a makeshift bus stop at Hyannis, Mass., near the Kennedy family compound.
The Reverse Freedom Riders, including Williams’s family, were first housed in dorms provided by the local community college before they were moved into unused barracks at Otis Air Force Base, which Singelmann later described as a “concentration camp.”
