<Ul> <Li> Eugene "Bull" Connor </Li> <Li> Tom Cook </Li> </Ul> <Li> Eugene "Bull" Connor </Li> <P> Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional . The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them . The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17 . </P> <P> Boynton outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines . Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955) that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel . The ICC failed to enforce its ruling, and Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South . </P>

What was the cause of the freedom riders