Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April of 1962, there are ads running in newspapers in Louisiana, which read,

free transportation plus $5 for expenses to any Negro man or woman or family no limit in size who desire to

migrate to the nation's capital or any city in the north of their choosing.

This ad may seem somewhat innocuous if a little confusing, free transportation for black men and women from the south to a city in the north.

But these ads were taken out by the Greater New Orleans Citizens Council, which is a white group that

opposed civil rights efforts, and this plan was essentially in retaliation for

the freedom rides. We've talked about the freedom rides before on the show, but

that is when mostly

young white liberals from the north would come to the south to help with photo registration

and other civil rights efforts.

And here were racist white groups in the south, jinning up this idea for what became known as the

reverse freedom rides and I guess the logic was like let's send black people from

the South to the North and then see how those liberal northerners feel about

it so let's talk about the reverse

freedom rides and what was really going on here and here as always Nicole

Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wusley. Hello there. Hi Jody. Hey there. So we'll get

into the specific effort here but I you know I named checked the Citizens Council

in this case it was the Greater New Orleans Citizens Councils,

but you read about Citizens Councils all the time you hear about Citizens Councils

sometimes they're referred to as White Citizens Councils, but this is our chance I guess

...