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.
Freedom Rides were organized bus rides throughout the South used to test enforcement of a U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting segregation and to protest segregated waiting rooms in southern terminals. Freedom riders faced extreme resistance in Alabama, where they were assaulted by mobs and Ku Klux Klan members.