[1] The case overturned a judgment convicting an African American law student for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal which was "whites only".

It moreover held that bus transportation was sufficiently related to interstate commerce to allow the United States federal government to regulate it to forbid racial discrimination in the industry.

The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, prompted Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to confront the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) with its failure to enforce a bus desegregation ruling it had handed down in 1955, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, 64 MCC 769 (1955) as well as the companion train desegregation case, NAACP v. St. Louis-Santa Fe Railway Company, 297 ICC 335 (1955).

[2] Ordered to move to the "black" section and knowing that his arrest was likely, Boynton pointed out to authorities that he was an American citizen with federal rights and, thus, was entitled to his burger and tea.

[2] In the Richmond Police Court, Boynton was convicted of violating a state statute making it a misdemeanor for any person "without authority of law" to remain upon the premises of another after having been forbidden to do so.