Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks

Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks
Part of the civil rights movement
Black bystander George Webb is beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham, Alabama. The man on the right with his back to the camera is FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. The photograph was taken by Tommy Langston of the Birmingham Post-Herald, who was chased and beaten by the mob moments after.
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, both Alabama, were acts of mob violence targeted against civil rights activists protesting against racial segregation in the Southern United States. They were carried out by the Ku Klux Klan with the cooperation of the Birmingham Police Department.

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 together through the Deep South. CORE hoped to provoke a violent reaction from segregationists that would force the federal government 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, shortly after 1 p.m., the Greyhound bus stopped in Anniston and was swarmed by a mob. While the police turned a blind eye, the bus was firebombed and the passengers physically assaulted. Only the presence of 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 passengers to seek medical attention.

The Trailways bus reached Anniston approximately one hour after the Greyhound bus. At this point several Alabama Klansmen (who had covertly boarded the bus 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, which galvanised public support for their cause. This put immense pressure on President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy to act, and in late September the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations which effectively ended segregation in interstate transport.

The Freedom Rides and the 14 May attacks brought CORE from a position of relative obscurity to the forefront of the national movement against white supremacy. They are considered a key event of the civil rights movement.

Background

Prelude to the Freedom Ride

The Congress of Racial Equality (1942)

James Farmer, one of the lead figures in CORE and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride, in 1964.

In 1942 James Farmer and other members of the pacifist organization Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian independence movement, they aimed to apply nonviolent principles to the struggle against racial discrimination in the United States. They utilized tactics such as sit-ins and boycotts.

Morgan v. Virginia (1946)

The United States Supreme Court ruled in Morgan v. Virginia (1946) that Virginia's state laws enforcing segregation on interstate public buses were unconstitutional. Despite this, bus companies and public officials in the former slave states ignored the ruling and de facto segregation largely continued, particularly in the Deep South.

The Journey of Reconciliation (1947)

Intending to test how the 1946 Supreme Court ruling was being enforced in the Upper South, FOR member Bayard Rustin organised what he called a "Journey of Reconciliation" – now sometimes referred to as the "First Freedom Ride". In 1947 he organised for a group of sixteen FOR and CORE members (eight black and eight white) to travel through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky on interstate buses. They split into two interracial groups so they would be able to test two major bus companies, Greyhound and Trailways.

The participants only faced one incidence of violence when James Peck – the only victim of the later Anniston/Birmingham attacks to take part in the Journey of Reconciliation – was punched in the head by a taxi driver. However, twelve were arrested for violating segregation and four (Rustin, Igal Roodenko, Joe Felmet, and Andrew Johnson) were sentenced to serve in chain gangs for periods ranging from 30–90 days. Although it brought moderate publicity to the issue of segregation, the Journey effected no change of the status quo.

Boynton v. Virginia (1960)

In 1960 a second Supreme Court ruling, Boynton v. Virginia, extended the ban on segregation on interstate public buses to include the associated terminals and facilities such as waiting rooms, restaurants, and toilets. Once again, states in the Deep South refused to comply and segregation continued.

The Freedom Ride

Main article: Freedom Riders

In 1961, following the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the southern civil rights movement started to lose attention. Compared to the looming Bay of Pigs Invasion and other Cold War tensions, Kennedy's administration saw civils rights as a minor annoyance rather than a pressing issue. After Martin Luther King Jr. was refused an invitation to a meeting between Kennedy and other civil rights leaders, he and James Farmer agreed that action needed to be taken in order to force the federal government to act.

Mindful of the recent Boynton v. Virginia ruling, Farmer suggested a revival of the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. Extended to cover states in the Deep South, it would be known as a "Freedom Ride". Farmer calculated that while the Riders would not break any laws, they would be likely to provoke a violent response which Kennedy would be unable to ignore.

On 4 May, under the leadership of Farmer and CORE, thirteen black and white volunteers boarded buses that would take them from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, Louisiana, via Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Freedom Rider John Lewis in 1964.

The riders were:

• Albert Bigelow
• Ed Blankenheim
• William E. Harbour
• Genevieve Hughes
• John Lewis
• Jimmy McDonald
• Ivor Moore
• Mae Frances Moultrie
• Joan Trumpauer Mulholland
• James Peck
• Joseph Perkins
• Charles Person
• Hank Thomas

As in 1947, the Riders split up in order to test both Greyhound and Trailways buses. They deliberately seated themselves so some of the white passengers were seated at the back of the bus while at least of some of the black passengers were sat in the front, which was forbidden under segregation. The buses left the capital without interference and only suffered minor problems in Virginia and North Carolina. However, John Lewis was attacked as the Riders passed through Rock Hill in South Carolina.

Attack on the Greyhound bus

Mural and signs in Anniston commemorating the Greyhound bus.

Freedom Rider Mae Frances Moultrie stands in front of a burning Greyhound bus after it was torched outside of Anniston.

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.

Attack on the Trailways bus

Mural and signs in Anniston commemorating the Trailways bus.

When the Trailways 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.

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.