This powerful documentary photograph relates to a somewhat forgotten but painfully-relevant aspect of the Civil Rights Movement - the "Reverse Freedom Rides." The "Reverse Freedom Rides" were a segregationist campaign that tricked Black Southerners into moving northward with false promises of jobs and housing. Organized by various White Citizens' Councils, a network of White segregationist organizations, the campaign was meant to to mock the 1961 Freedom Rides. It saw roughly 200–500 participants given one-way bus tickets to northern cities, often left to fend for themselves upon arrival.

The present photograph shows six men in a New York City bus terminal in May of 1962. They had come up from New Orleans looking for work, and were given one-way bus tickets and the false promise of employment by the White Citizens' Council of New Orleans. Upon arrival, they were met by representatives of the Travelers Aid Society and the Urban League. Edward Lewis, executive director of the Urban League of Greater New York, responded to the affair by stating that the White Citizens' Council is "a dangerous group which exploits human misery."