However, the earliest known reference is more specific: Inquiry of an Italian employee of the bureau elicited the information that a âgandy dancerâ is a railway worker who tamps down the earth between the ties, or otherwise âdancesâ on the track.
Eventually the federal government intervened to see that integration was enforced. By the time the Freedom Rides were over, segregation had suffered another blow. The Freedom Rides became a defining part of the civil rights movement, and the Freedom Riders became models of the heroism that transformed race relations.
Introduction. 1  Frederick Douglass will forever remain one of the most important figures in America's struggle for civil rights and racial equality. 2  His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is a moving account of the courage of one man's struggle against the injustice of antebellum slavery.