Frank C. Curtin/Associated Press |
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The governor of Florida this past week paid to fly two planeloads of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard — the latest in a series of stunts by Republican governors that have ensnared migrants in a political fight over border security.
Three of the migrants told NPR that a woman they identified as “Perla” gave them food and lured them onto the plane, saying they'd be flown to Boston to get expedited work papers. That didn’t happen. Instead, they were flown to Martha's Vineyard, where a local police chief said a number of migrants were confused, asking, “‘Where am I?’”
"Look, when you have no money and someone offers help, well, it means a lot," one 30-year-old Venezuelan said.
Something like this has happened before.
It was 1962, and Southern segregationists were incensed about a group of Black and white activists — the Freedom Riders — who were crisscrossing the South by Greyhound to integrate the interstate bus system. The segregationists had become convinced the Riders only cared about embarrassing the South and securing Black votes for the Democratic Party.
So the segregationists hatched a plan to lash out at Northern liberals: They would weaponize the Freedom Riders’ bus strategy, tricking some 200 Black Southerners into moving North with false promises of opportunity.
To them, the idea was simple: When large numbers of Black people showed up on Northerners’ doorsteps, they wouldn’t be able to accommodate them, wouldn’t want them, and their hypocrisy would be revealed.
They recruited the help of local Citizens’ Councils — what one historian called the KKK “without hoods and the masks" — to create an advertising blitz that coaxed single mothers, welfare recipients and others they saw as burdens on state resources into accepting bus tickets to the North.
Lela Mae Williams was one of their unwitting pawns. She and her kids were among the 96 who got dropped off at a makeshift bus stop near the Kennedys’ “summer White House” on Cape Cod. She’d been promised a good job and housing — and a presidential welcome.
Those were all lies.
Read reporter Gabrielle Emanuel’s story on the legacy of the Reverse Freedom Rides — and why one historian says the tale is a reminder of how bystanders can foil a racist plot. |
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Stephen Osman/Los Angeles Times via Getty Image |
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