Aboard two buses, 13 men and women, some Negro and some white, set out from Washington, D.C., in early May. They called themselves "Freedom Riders." They meant to demonstrate that segregated travel on interstate buses, even though banned by an I.C.C. ruling, is still enforced throughout much of the South. They were, in fact, hunting for trouble—and last week in Alabama they found more of it than they wanted. For in Alabama, mobs were permitted to run free and wild by top state and local officials who, from Alabama's Governor John Patterson on down, abdicated their duties of maintaining law and order. The result by week's end was a brutal, bloody outbreak of violence that brought on the gravest federal-state conflict since Little Rock.
The Freedom Riders' trip began as an enterprise sponsored and paid for by the Congress of Racial Equality, an organization headquartered in Manhattan and dedicated to breaking down Southern racial barriers through nonviolent techniques. CORE selected its Freedom Riders from among some 60 volunteers. Assembling in Washington, the group underwent three days of training in CORE methods of meeting violent situations without fighting back. Among the leaders of the Freedom Ride were two white men who have made careers of getting into trouble for causes: New York's James Peck, 46, who spent three years in prison as a conscientious objector during World War II, and Connecticut's Architect-Painter Albert Bigelow, 55, who got tossed into a Honolulu cell after he and three shipmates set out in 1958 in the ketch Golden Rule, heading for Eniwetok atoll in an effort to halt scheduled U.S. nuclear tests.
Setting out from Washington, the Freedom Riders rolled with little fuss through Virginia and North Carolina. At each stop Negroes used white rest rooms, sat at white lunch counters. There was a brief scuffle at Rock Hill, S.C.; two Negro riders were arrested and quickly released in Winnsboro, S.C. Then came another quiet stretch. No incidents took place in Sumter. S.C., Camden, S.C., Augusta, Ga. and Atlanta.
Bombed Bus. "I could tell the difference when we crossed the state line into Alabama." recalls Negro Freedom Rider Charles Person, 18. "The atmosphere was tense." Outside Anniston, the first stop in Alabama, whites who had been pursuing in cars caught up with the Freedom Riders. An incendiary bomb was hurled through a broken window, setting the bus afire. "The bus soon filled with black, acrid smoke," recalls Freedom Rider Bigelow. "We had to get out somehow—there was no chance at all of surviving inside." The waiting toughs beat up some of the Freedom Riders who emerged first, but police then fired pistols into the air, and the mob drew back. Ambulances took the Freedom Riders to the Anniston hos pital, where examinations showed that none had been seriously injured. The Freedom Riders in Bus No. 1 were finally rescued by Birmingham Negroes who heard of their plight, sent cars and brought them to Birmingham.