Slideshow: Remembering the Freedom Riders

Freedom rider James Peck picketing outside the Greyhound Bus Terminal. (Photo by Hal Mathewson/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

Lucretia Collins, 21, "Freedom Rider" from Fairbanks, Alaska, walks to plane in Jackson, May 27, 1961, after being freed from the county jail on $500 bond. (AP Photo)

Moments before Tommy Langston was attacked on May 14, 1961, he shot this single photo of Klansmen attacking a Freedom Rider at the Trailways Bus Station in Birmingham. The photo helped identify Klansmen involved in the assault. (AP Photo/Birmingham Post-Herald, Tommy Langston, File)

A group of Freedom Riders from Tennessee stands at the door of a Greyhound bus in Birmingham, Ala., on May 19, 1961. Drivers refused to take the racially mixed group out and after a wait of about two hours the college students tried to board another bus going the same way. The second bus was also canceled. (AP Photo)

This is a May 28, 1963 file photograph of a sit-in demonstration at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson, Miss., where whites poured sugar, ketchup and mustard over heads of the demonstrators. Seated at the counter, from left, are John Salter, Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody. (AP Photo/Jackson Daily News, Fred Blackwell, File)

A policeman searches a Freedom Rider in the white waiting room of the bus station, May 28, 1961, Jackson, Miss. Eight more Riders were arrested when they failed to heed orders to move on. Seated at right are two more of the group, including one white man. (AP Photo/Ferd Kaufman)

This is a June 8, 1961 Jackson Police Department file booking photograph of Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer provided by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History from their "Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Records" Collection. (AP Photo/Mississippi Department of Archives and History, City of Jackson, File)

The end of a day of trial brought spontaneous laughter for two freedom riders and a girl sympathizer at Tallahassee, Fla., on Thursday, June 22, 1961. (AP Photo)

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., center, African American integration leader, announces that freedom riders still plan a bus trip to New Orleans via Mississippi, Tuesday, May 24, 1961, Montgomery, Ala. Left is the Rev. Ralph Abernathy in whose Montgomery home they are shown during the announcement. More riders are reported arriving to replace some whose trip ended in a Montgomery bus station race clash on Saturday. (AP Photo)

An unidentified young Black 'Freedom Rider' is told to leave a segregated 'white' waiting room at a bus depot in Jackson, Mississippi, May 26, 1961. The Freedom Riders traveled from Montgomery, Alabama to Mississippi to protest segregation in public bus depots. (Photo by Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

One unidentified white man sits in front of Greyhound bus to prevent it from leaving the station with load of Freedom Riders testing bus station segregation in South, Sunday, May 15, 1961, Anniston, Alabama. (AP Photo)

An unidentified Freedom Rider sticks his head out of a chartered bus window to view the excitement, as the busload from New York arrived, Aug. 14, 1961, Jackson, Miss. Over 180 Riders are expected for the opening of Hinds County Court and their appeals trial. (AP Photo)

“Freedom Riders” Levert Taylor, 20, and Glenda Jackson, both of Shreveport, La., are shown with policeman W.L. Copeland at Jackson, Miss., on Nov. 1, 1961 in Jackson, Miss., after their arrest on a breach of peace charge for refusing to move out of the white waiting room at a bus station there. Taylor and Miss Jackson were in Jackson to test the ICC desegregation ruling. (AP Photo/Jim Bourdier)

Over 200 blacks are shown as they were arrested in Albany, Ga. after staging a demonstration in front of City Hall protesting against the trial of Freedom Riders arrested here earlier, Dec. 13, 1961. Nearly 500 have been arrested this week. (AP Photo/Horace Cort)

Freedom Riders arrested 1961. (AP Photo)

"Freedom Riders" from California were arrested at the coffee shop of Houston's Union Station train depot, August 11, 1961, as they tried to get service. The 18 were held in the Harris County Jail when the refused to post $500 bonds on unlawful assembly charges. The group included seven whites. Those shown are awaiting transfer from the city jail to the county jail after they were booked. There was no violence. They were charged by James D. Burleson, manager of the coffee shop. (AP Photo/Ed Kolenovsky)

Jim Zwerg, a "freedom rider" recuperates in hospital on May 21, 1961 in Montgomery, Ala. after he was beaten by a mob at the bus station yesterday. Zwerg, 21 years old ministerial student, suffered cuts and bruises and lost several teeth in the attack. (AP Photo/Horace Cort)

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth (center) and Freedom Riders discuss plans at Birmingham, Ala., Greyhound Terminal, May 15, 1961, after drivers refused to carry them any farther. Later, the riders caught a plane out of Birmingham to New Orleans. Surrounding Shuttlesworth, clockwise from left: Ed Blankenheim, kneeling, Charles Person, Ike Reynolds, James Peck, Rev. Benjamin Cox, and two unidentified Freedom Riders. (AP Photo/The Birmingham News)