In 1961 over four hundred civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders attempted to racially integrate interstate buses, bus station and restaurants in the South. The US Supreme Court had previously decided in the cases Boynton v. Virginia and Morgan v. Virginia that segregated buses were unconstitutional, although these decisions were unenforced and ignored. The Freedom Rides were organized by individuals including the executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) James Foreman. The Riders were both Black and non-Black, mostly young people, and many were college students from a variety of states. Their travelling together in integrated groups provoked local law enforcement to arrest many of the Riders for violating Jim Crow laws, for trespassing, for unlawful assembly and other offenses. Mobs of enraged segregationists also attacked the Riders and the buses they rode on. On May 14, 1961, one of their Greyhound buses was firebombed. Around sixty separate trips of Freedom Riders crossed the South during 1961, and the resulting bloodshed and press coverage pressured the federal government’s Interstate Commerce Commission to issue an order allowing passengers on interstate trains and buses to sit in seats regardless of race.