As human rights advocates denounce efforts by Republicans to send dozens of buses full of asylum seekers to sanctuary cities across the United States, we look at the related history of the Reverse Freedom Rides of 1962, when Southern segregationists bused Black families to the North to antagonize Northern liberals and civil rights activists. Mwalim Peters, English and Black studies professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, recounts the little-known story of the Reverse Freedom Rides and says the strategy to humiliate liberals is “basically identical to what’s happening now in Martha’s Vineyard” and other sanctuary cities, where Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott are sending asylum seekers under false pretenses of free housing and jobs. Instead, they find themselves being used as a media stunt and stranded. “We’re looking at any number of, basically, potentially criminal infractions, let alone just moral and ethical,” he adds.

This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.