However, the earliest known reference is more specific: Inquiry of an Italian employee of the bureau elicited the information that a âgandy dancerâ is a railway worker who tamps down the earth between the ties, or otherwise âdancesâ on the track.
Eventually the federal government intervened to see that integration was enforced. By the time the Freedom Rides were over, segregation had suffered another blow. The Freedom Rides became a defining part of the civil rights movement, and the Freedom Riders became models of the heroism that transformed race relations.
In May 1961, the first group of 13 Freedom Riders, white and black ranging in age from college students to a 60-year-old professor and his wife, left Washington, DC, on their way via Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi to New Orleans, Louisiana.