The Man Who Inspired ‘Freedom Riders’ Bruce Carver Boynton Has Passed at 83

In 1958 Bruce Carver Boynton a student at Howard University Law School took a stand against racial segregation at a Virginia bus station when he refused to sit in the “Black diner” of the bus station because it was nasty and dirty,  Boynton instead, insisted on being served in the “White diner” which was maintained and clean.  After the manager disrespected and refused to serve Boynton he was arrested.  Boynton took his case, Boynton v. Virginia, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he was defended by Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

From there history was born, Bruce Carver Boynton’s actions inspired the 1961 Freedom Riders activists rode buses through the South to protest segregated bus terminals whose actions led to President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act into law, ending the Jim Crow-era laws in 1964.