In 1947, eight Black people and eight white people got on various interstate buses to test the compliance of the new Supreme Court ruling to desegregate interstate vehicles. Desegregation was the act of making specific places, like buildings or buses, accessible to all races, instead of segregating them. These bus rides that went through several states were called the Journey of Reconciliation. The riders' main goal was to assert their right to sit wherever they wanted on interstate buses and other interstate vehicles.

These riders were arrested in Chapel Hill and prosecuted at the Orange County Courthouse located in Hillsborough. The riders were arrested because they were not crossing state lines, and thus weren’t subject to the Supreme Court ruling that would have protected them. The case was appealed and sent to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which upheld their conviction.

Those who were arrested were sent to segregated chain gangs, while those who escaped arrest later surrendered in 1949 at the Orange County Courthouse. One of the riders and organizers, a Black man named Bayard Rustin, spent 22 days on a North Carolina chain gang. Rustin, an openly gay man, was known as a prominent activist who participated in many nonviolent protests for Civil Rights and the LGBTQ+ community.

Another event, which followed the Journey of Reconciliation, was The Freedom Rides, which began in May of 1961. These Freedom Rides started in Washington DC and ended in Louisiana. Chapel Hill was a stop on the route.

It is widely claimed that the Journey of Reconciliation helped inspire Rosa Parks in 1955 and the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s. The old courthouse is also significant in Black history, especially in the 1960s because Civil Rights protests involving students from local all-Black high schools in Chapel Hill, Durham, and Hillsborough, took place on its steps.

Photo Credit: Library of Congress

Bayard Rustin speaking in New York City in 1965.