Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks

Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks
Part of the Civil Rights movement
Freedom Rider Mae Frances Moultrie stands in front of a burning Greyhound bus after it was torched outside of Anniston
Location of Anniston in Calhoun County, Alabama.
Location	Anniston, Alabama
Coordinates	33.658124°N 85.83114°W / 33.658124; -85.83114
Date	May 14, 1961; 63 years ago ~1:00 p.m. (UTC-5)
Target	Freedom Riders
Attack type	Firebombing Mob violence Attempted lynching
Injured	~13
Victims	Freedom Riders: Joe Perkins Genevieve Hughes Albert Bigelow Hank Thomas Jimmy McDonald Mae Frances Moultrie Ed Blankenheim Journalists: Charlotte Devree Moses Newson
Perpetrators	Mob led by Anniston Ku Klux Klan leader William Chappell
No. of participants	~50
Defenders	Alabama Highway Patrol agents Ell Cowling and Harry Sims
Motive	Racism and support for racial segregation

The Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks, which occurred on 14 May 1961 in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama, were acts of mob violence targeted against civil rights activists protesting against racial segregation in the Southern United States.

Although the United States Supreme Court had ruled that segregation on interstate public transport was unconstitutional, southern Jim Crow states had continued to enforce it. In order to challenge this noncompliance, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organised for interracial groups of volunteers – whom they dubbed "Freedom Riders" – to travel through the Deep South on interstate buses. As this was expected to provoke violent reactions from segregationists, CORE hoped that the federal government would be forced to step in. On 4 May 1961 the first thirteen Freedom Riders, among them future US House Representative John Lewis, boarded two buses – one operated by Greyhound and the other by Trailways – departing from Washington, D.C. for New Orleans, Louisiana. Their route would take them through the segregationist stronghold of Alabama, where Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor conspired with local chapters of the Klan to attack the Riders.

On 14 May, when the Greyhound bus stopped in Anniston shortly after 1 p.m., it was swarmed by a mob. With the police turning a blind eye, the bus was firebombed, forcing the passengers out and exposing them to physical assaults. Two armed Alabama Highway Patrol agents (who had travelled on the bus posing as regular passengers) prevented the Freedom Riders from being lynched. The attackers eventually dispersed, leaving the Riders to seek medical attention.

The Trailways bus reached Anniston approximately one hour after the Greyhound bus. Several Klansmen (who had boarded earlier in Atlanta, Georgia) assaulted the Riders and forced the black passengers to move to the back of the bus. The bus then continued to Birmingham, where a mob of additional Klan members, armed with blunt weapons, attacked the Freedom Riders in a fifteen minute frenzy of violence, during which the police deliberately vacated the area. Although there were no fatalities, several of the Riders – as well as a number of news reporters, multiple black bystanders, and a Klansman who was accidentally beaten by his own accomplices – required hospital treatment.

The attacks caused shock throughout the country and brought the issue of segregation under an international spotlight, embarrassing the United States during the height of the Cold War. Although most of the Freedom Riders opted to continue to New Orleans via plane, Lewis and Hank Thomas stayed in Birmingham in order to organize a new Freedom Ride with fresh recruits. Connors and the Klan had intended to deter future Freedom Rides, but the attacks had the opposite effect and inspired hundreds of volunteers to spend the summer of 1961 travelling across the South facing arrest and mob violence. This put immense pressure on President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy to act and in late September the Interstate Commerce Commission issued rules which effectively ended segregation on interstate vehicles and in transport terminals. Due to their eventual success, the original Freedom Rides and the attacks on them are now considered key events of the civil rights movement.

Anniston attack

Mural and signs in Anniston commemorating the Greyhound bus

On Sunday, May 14, Mother's Day, in Anniston, Alabama, a mob of Klansmen, some still in church attire, attacked the Greyhound bus. The driver tried to leave the station, but he was blocked until Ku Klux Klan members slashed its tires. The mob forced the crippled bus to stop several miles outside town and then threw a firebomb into it. As the bus burned, the mob held the doors shut, intending to burn the riders to death. Sources disagree, but either an exploding fuel tank or an undercover state investigator who was brandishing a revolver caused the mob to retreat, and the riders escaped the bus. The mob beat the riders after they got out. Warning shots which were fired into the air by highway patrolmen were the only thing which prevented the riders from being lynched. The roadside site in Anniston and the downtown Greyhound station were preserved as part of the Freedom Riders National Monument in 2017.

The roadside location where the Greyhound bus was burned

Some injured riders were taken to Anniston Memorial Hospital. That night, the hospitalized Freedom Riders, most of whom had been refused care, were removed from the hospital at 2 AM, because the staff feared the mob outside the hospital. The local civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth organized several cars of black citizens to rescue the injured Freedom Riders in defiance of the white supremacists. The black people were under the leadership of Colonel Stone Johnson and were openly armed as they arrived at the hospital, protecting the Freedom Riders from the mob.

When the Trailways bus reached Anniston and pulled in at the terminal an hour after the Greyhound bus was burned, it was boarded by eight Klansmen. They beat the Freedom Riders and left them semi-conscious in the back of the bus.

Birmingham attack

Mural and signs in Anniston commemorating the Trailways bus

On 14 May 1961, during the American Civil Rights Movement, a mob of Ku Klux Klan members attacked civil rights Freedom Riders in Birmingham, Alabama after two buses were setting out to travel the south in protest of their civil rights following the Supreme Court case saying bus segregation was unconstitutional.

When the bus arrived in Birmingham, Alabama, it was attacked by a mob of Ku Klux Klan members aided and abetted by police under the orders of Commissioner Bull Connor. As the riders exited the bus, they were beaten by the mob with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains. Among the attacking Klansmen was Gary Thomas Rowe, an FBI informant. White Freedom Riders were singled out for especially frenzied beatings; James Peck required more than 50 stitches to the wounds in his head.  Peck was taken to Carraway Methodist Medical Center, which refused to treat him; he was later treated at Jefferson Hillman Hospital.

Freedom Riders are beaten by a mob in Birmingham, Alabama.

When reports of the bus burning and beatings reached US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, he urged restraint on the part of Freedom Riders and sent an assistant, John Seigenthaler, to Alabama to try to calm the situation.^{[citation needed]}

Despite the violence suffered and the threat of more to come, the Freedom Riders intended to continue their journey. Kennedy had arranged an escort for the Riders in order to get them to Montgomery, Alabama, safely. However, radio reports told of a mob awaiting the riders at the bus terminal, as well as on the route to Montgomery. The Greyhound clerks told the Riders that their drivers were refusing to drive any Freedom Riders anywhere.

State historic marker at the location of the Greyhound bus burning