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"A Peaceful People." Just as bruising was the ordeal of the seven Freedom Riders aboard Bus No. 2, which had trailed several miles behind the lead bus coming into Anniston. In Anniston, eight whites climbed aboard, began roughing up the Freedom Riders before cops broke up the brawl. At Birmingham's Trailways Terminal, another mob charged the bus, swinging fists, blackjacks and lengths of pipe. Although the terminal is just two blocks from Birmingham's police headquarters, the cops were conspicuously absent when the blood began to flow. Said tough, bullfrog-voiced Police Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor later: "Our people of Birmingham are a peaceful people, and we never have any trouble here unless some people come into our city looking for trouble." Said Alabama's Governor John Patterson: "I cannot guarantee protection for this bunch of rabble-rousers." Not everyone in Alabama was so complacent about the situation. The Birmingham News, which last year vigorously denounced the New York Times for saying that fear and hatred stalked the streets of Birmingham. now conceded that "fear and hatred did stalk Birmingham's streets yesterday."
The Freedom Riders gave up their bus tour and flew to New Orleans and safety. Whether courting martyrdom or standing for principle, they had unprotestingly submitted to blows and injuries for their cause. And now others took it up. In fast-integrating Nashville (see below), a group of ten college students—eight Negroes and two whites—felt impelled to finish out the Freedom Riders' uncompleted bus trip from Birmingham to New Orleans. When the bus bringing the students from Nashville got to Birmingham, the cops first jailed the students in "protective custody."
To protect the Nashville bus riders, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy warned Alabama's Governor Patterson of U.S. concern with the case, considered sending in federal marshals, and dispatched Administrative Assistant John Seigenthaler to send back firsthand reports. Bobby Kennedy tried to get Patterson on the phone. But John Patterson, who loves to spout off about states' rights, was unwilling to take on the responsibility for maintaining law and order in his state. Patterson's office declared the Governor unavailable to the U.S. Attorney General. Later, at Bobby's urging. President Kennedy himself tried to call Patterson —but the office said he was somewhere "out on the Gulf" and could not be reached.
In the vacuum of Alabama leadership, riot ruled. Some of the Nashville stu dents, joined by sympathizers, white and black, boarded a Greyhound bus and were escorted to Birmingham's limits by city cops, who then turned the whole business over to state troopers. But despite ample, early and dire warnings, no policemen were waiting when the bus pulled into Montgomery, Ala., a city that had been relatively free of racial violence since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a successful Negro boycott against bus segregation (TIME cover, Feb. 18, 1957).
And so, when the integrationist bus stopped in Montgomery last week, there was no one to stop the senselessness. An idiot, club-swinging mob of about 100 surged toward the riders. Trying to save a Negro girl from serious injury, John Seigenthaler got clouted from behind.