Arsenault Raymond. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice

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216 Freedom Riders

friends, the British author Jessica Mitford, was somewhere down on the street

and possibly caught in the melee. Eventually another friend, Bob Zellner—a

white student activist at Montgomery’s Huntingdon College who would be-

come a Freedom Rider himself later in the year—retrieved an unharmed

Mitford from the mob. But the whole scene left Durr shaken and despairing

for the future of her city.

Closer to the action on the street, Fred and Anna Gach, a local white

couple with liberal views, tried to intervene on the Freedom Riders’ behalf.

This only seemed to inflame the mob. Later in the day, the Montgomery

police arrested the Gaches for disorderly conduct. Eventually fined three

hundred dollars by a city judge, they were among only a handful of persons

arrested that Saturday, even though the police arrived in time to apprehend

at least part of the mob. When Commissioner Sullivan and the police ap-

peared on the scene, approximately ten minutes after the bus’s arrival, the

initial phase of the riot was still in progress. But there was no effort to detain

or arrest anyone involved in the beatings. Nor was there any attempt to clear

the area, even though the crowd continued to grow. Most of the officers

simply stood by and watched as the rioters got in a few more licks. Indeed,

according to several observers, the realization that the police were openly

sympathetic actually emboldened some members of the crowd, turning

gawkers into active rioters. “I saw whites and negroes beaten unmercifully

while law officers calmly directed traffic,” Tom Lankford of the Birmingham

News reported, adding: “I was an eye-witness to the mob attack last Sunday

on the so-called ‘freedom riders’ in Birmingham. But with all its terror, it

didn’t compare with this. . . . Saturday was hell in Montgomery.”

Although the police were officially on hand to restore order, Sullivan’s

primary concern was clearly a reassertion of local authority. As soon as he

learned that Mann was on the loading platform, he rushed over to take charge.

To his dismay, however, he was soon upstaged by the arrival of several state

and county officials, including Judge Walter Jones and Attorney General

MacDonald Gallion. Walking over to Lewis, who was still lying half-conscious

on the pavement, Gallion asked a deputy sheriff to read the injunction that

Jones had issued earlier in the morning. The Freedom Riders, Lewis now

learned, were outlaws in the state of Alabama.

That the Freedom Riders were also victims of vigilante violence did not

seem to trouble Jones and Gallion, or the police officers nearby who made a

point of fraternizing with members of the mob. Other than Mann, no one in

a position of authority showed any interest in helping the injured Riders.

Although Zwerg was bleeding profusely and passing in and out of conscious-

ness, the police refused to call an ambulance. Convinced that Zwerg was near

death, Lewis and Barbee, with the help of a reporter, carried the young di-

vinity student over to an empty cab, but the white driver grabbed the keys

and stormed off. Still sitting in the back seat but barely conscious, Zwerg

soon attracted the attention of the deputy sheriff, who sauntered over to read

If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus 217

Freedom Riders John Lewis and Jim Zwerg after they were beaten at the Mont-

gomery Greyhound bus station, Saturday, May 20, 1961. (Library of Congress)

Freedom Rider Jim Zwerg after

being attacked by Klansmen at

the Montgomery Greyhound bus

station, Saturday, May 20, 1961.

(Bettmann-CORBIS)

218 Freedom Riders

the injunction for a second time. A few minutes later, Lewis and Barbee found

a black cabdriver willing to drive them to a doctor’s office, but the police

would not allow Zwerg to go with them, insisting that he would have to wait

for a white ambulance. When reporters asked Sullivan why no such ambulance

had appeared, he claimed that all of the city’s white ambulances were in the

repair shop. Eventually Mann intervened, ordering one of his young patrol-

men, Tommy Giles, to transport Zwerg to St. Jude’s Catholic Hospital by car.

But Sullivan’s intended message was unmistakable: The outside agitators, es-

pecially the “nigger loving” white ones, had gotten what they deserved.

By the time Mann and Giles put Zwerg in the car, all of the other Riders

had left the bus terminal, and most had found at least a temporary refuge.

The five female Riders in the taxicab—all of whom witnessed the beatings of

Zwerg, Lewis, and Barbee before leaving—found a phone booth a few blocks

from the terminal and called Fred Shuttlesworth, who relayed their where-

abouts to Diane Nash. Others called Nash directly, blurting out the shock-

ing news of what had just happened, including the injunction that seemed to

make them all fugitives. Fearing that all of the Riders were now subject to

arrest, Nash advised them to stay out of sight and away from the police.

Unfortunately, this plan had already been compromised by Wilbur and

Hermann, who had called the police after fleeing from the terminal area.

After retrieving them from a downtown church, police officers promptly made

arrangements to send the two women back to Nashville by train. The rest of

the Freedom Riders, however, got the word in time to lay low. When he

heard about the Riders’ plight, the Reverend Solomon S. Seay Sr., one of the

heroes of the bus boycott, offered his home as a safe house, and by early

afternoon the Riders began to gather there.

Back at the terminal, the crowd hardly seemed to notice that the Free-

dom Riders were no longer there. With the police making only a token ef-

fort to restore order, several of the rioters gathered up the Riders’ belongings

and constructed a bonfire in the middle of the street. Others continued the

attacks on newsmen and anyone else who looked like an outsider. Although

the size of the crowd had swelled to several hundred, Sullivan and the hand-

ful of officers dispatched to the terminal seemed content to let the riot run its

course with a minimum of interference. At 11:30 a disgusted Floyd Mann

called in sixty-five highway patrolmen to the scene, and a few minutes later

they were joined by several deputy sheriffs on horseback. But the city police

did not respond in force until one o’clock, nearly three hours after the riot

had begun. Sensing the reporters’ disapproval, Sullivan belatedly ordered his

men to make a few arrests and even authorized the use of tear gas to disperse

the crowd. Nevertheless, sporadic violence continued for more than two hours

as the mob broke up into small gangs that spread the mayhem into surround-

ing streets. Several parked cars were overturned and set ablaze, and less than

a block from the terminal a band of whites assaulted two black bystanders—

dousing one with kerosene and setting him on fire, and breaking the other’s

If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus 219

leg. Both survived, but their attackers avoided arrest or even passing notice

from the police. By the time the rioting ended around four o’clock, twenty

people had been seriously injured.

Once order was restored, Sullivan held an impromptu press conference

in the terminal parking lot. “I really don’t know what happened,” he told the

reporters. “When I got here, all I saw were three men lying in the street.

There was two niggers and a white man.” Obviously pleased with what had

transpired, he made little effort to hide his disregard for the victims, though

later in the day he became a bit more cautious as he and other city leaders

began to worry about how all of this would play in the press. “We all sincerely

regret that this happened here in Montgomery,” he declared, insisting “it

could have been avoided had outside agitators left us alone. . . . Providing

police protection for agitators is not our policy, but we would have been ready

if we had had definite and positive information they were coming.” Federal

and state officials would later put Sullivan on the defensive by disputing the

Mounted deputy sheriffs arrive at the riot scene outside the Montgomery Grey-

hound bus station at 11:45

A.M., more than an hour after the attack on the Free-

dom Riders, May 20, 1961. (Courtesy of the Nashville Tennessean and AP Wide

World)

220 Freedom Riders

claim that he had been unaware of the Freedom Riders’ impending arrival.

Indeed, many observers, including Judge Richard Rives, eventually concluded

that Sullivan had followed the lead of Birmingham’s Bull Connor. Several

days after the beatings, Rives overheard a local Klansman praise Sullivan for

cooperating with the mob. “Sully kept his word,” the Klansman chortled.

“He said he’d give us half an hour to beat up those God-damned sons of

bitches and he did.” Even John Patterson, in a 1988 interview, acknowledged

that he was fairly certain that Sullivan “had let the Klan know that he’d give

them a few minutes to work on the riders a little bit.”

Some members of the press suspected as much from the outset, but in

the absence of hard evidence of complicity most were content, for the time

being at least, to focus on the most sensational episode of the day—the attack

on John Seigenthaler. At first Sullivan himself paid little attention to the

news that a man claiming to be a personal representative of the president had

been beaten by the mob, but the apparent seriousness of Seigenthaler’s inju-

ries and the rumor that Sullivan had initially refused to call an ambulance for

the stricken federal official made the incident an unavoidable issue by late

Saturday afternoon. Following a brief conversation with a police lieutenant,

Seigenthaler had lapsed back into unconsciousness before being rushed to a

local hospital. Listed in serious condition, he later woke up in an X-ray room

as his doctor talked to a stunned Byron White on the phone. Seigenthaler

had a fractured skull and several broken ribs, the doctor told White, but with

a little luck he would make a full recovery. To prove his point, the doctor

then handed the phone to Seigenthaler, who managed to say a few words

before drifting off to sleep. Relieved, White assured his groggy colleague

that the attorney general already had been apprised of the situation.

Before calling the hospital, White had tracked Robert Kennedy down at

an FBI baseball game. Visibly shaken by White’s sketchy but graphic report of

the riot, Kennedy called an emergency meeting of his senior staff. By late Sat-

urday afternoon he was cloistered with White, Marshall, and several others

who were still trying to determine exactly what had happened. When it be-

came clear that the Montgomery police had done little or nothing to protect

the Freedom Riders or anybody else who got in the mob’s way, Kennedy called

John Patterson for an explanation. Patterson, who had not spoken to Kennedy

since Thursday evening, dodged the call. For Kennedy this was the final straw.

No governor could be allowed to thumb his nose at the federal government

while countenancing the wanton disruption of civil order. The force of federal

marshals that he and his brother had hoped would never be used, he now real-

ized, was the only available deterrent to continued disorder and disrespect.

After a brief conversation with his brother, who was away on a weekend

retreat, the attorney general ordered Marshall and White to activate the

mobilization plan. Declaring that he wanted the marshals on the ground in

Alabama within twenty-four hours, he asked White to assume operational

command of the force and Marshall to handle the legal side of the operation

If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus 221

through John Doar. Within minutes Marshall was on the phone with Doar

finalizing the language of a proposed federal court injunction prohibiting the

Klan and the National States Rights Party from interfering with interstate

transit. And within an hour, James McShane, the head of the U.S. Marshal

Service, and twenty of his deputies were on their way to National Airport to

catch a flight to Montgomery. Other marshals from the various parts of the

South and Midwest soon followed, and by midnight more than a hundred

had arrived at Montgomery’s Maxwell Air Force Base, two miles from the

site of the riot.

As the preparations began to take shape on Saturday afternoon, Robert

Kennedy called Seigenthaler’s hospital room and was pleased to discover that

the patient was doing better than expected, despite “a terrible headache.”

When Kennedy informed him that the marshals were on the way, Seigenthaler

expressed regret and apologized for his inability to defuse the crisis. Kennedy

assured him that it was not his fault. The federal-state showdown was bound

to happen “sooner or later,” the attorney general insisted, adding: “Don’t

feel bad about it, it’s just what you had to do, and I’m glad you’re alright.”

Before hanging up, Seigenthaler thanked Kennedy for his understanding,

though he couldn’t resist offering a few parting words of advice: “Don’t run

for governor of Alabama; you’re not too popular down here.” A few minutes

later, an unexpected visit from a tearful Floyd Mann reminded Seigenthaler

that not all white Alabamians were Kennedy haters. But the hard truth of his

quip seemed unassailable as the most harrowing afternoon of his life came to

a close.

ROBERT KENNEDY did not like the idea of alienating the voters of a state that

had just given his brother five electoral votes, but he was running out of

patience—and options. Though politically expedient, relying on state and

local officials to preserve civic order was proving too risky. While Kennedy

planned to do everything he could to minimize the political damage, he now

saw no alternative to a show of federal force in Alabama. With the summit in

Vienna less than two weeks away, he simply could not allow the image and

moral authority of the United States to be undercut by a mob of racist vigi-

lantes, or, for that matter, by a band of headstrong students determined to

provoke them. Like it or not, he had to do something dramatic to bring the

Freedom Rider crisis to a close. The decision to send in the marshals was also

personal. As several administration insiders later acknowledged, the Kennedy

brothers were furious at Patterson. Either out of incompetence or in out-

right connivance—and the Kennedys suspected the latter—he had presided

over a needless escalation of violence that included a shameless attack on

federal authority. Allowing a gang of white supremacist roughnecks to beat

up a bunch of kids in front of the press was bad enough. Standing by while a

personal representative of the president of the United States was assaulted in

the street was unforgivable.

222 Freedom Riders

Neither the attorney general nor the president would ever trust Patterson

again, but by late Saturday afternoon both men had worked through enough

of their anger to draft carefully worded public statements outlining the fed-

eral government’s response to the Montgomery riot. Realizing that the na-

tional wire services and radio and television networks were bound to treat a

riot that included attacks on newsmen and a presidential envoy as a major

news story, the Kennedys hoped to preempt what they feared would be an

alarmist press response. The president’s brief statement, released directly to

the press, conveyed a mixture of concern and reassurance and implicitly criti-

cized Alabama officials as well as the Freedom Riders:

The situation which has developed in Alabama is a source of the deepest

concern to me as it must be to the vast majority of the citizens of Alabama

and all America. I have instructed the Justice Department to take all neces-

sary steps based on their investigation and information. I call upon the

Governor and other responsible state officials in Alabama as well as the

Mayors of Birmingham and Montgomery to exercise their lawful authority

to prevent any further outbreaks of violence. I would also hope that any

person, whether a citizen of Alabama, or a visitor there, would refrain from

any action which would in any way tend to provoke further outbreaks. I

hope that state and local officials will meet their responsibilities. The United

States Government intends to meet its.

Longer and more explicit than his brother’s effort, the attorney general’s

statement took the form of a personal telegram to Patterson, the text of which

was immediately released to the press. Robert Kennedy wanted the world to

know the exact circumstances that had prompted the decision to send a fed-

eral peacekeeping force to Alabama: the failure of state and local officials to

live up to the agreement worked out by Seigenthaler and Mann on Friday

evening; the repeated and largely futile attempts to communicate directly

with the governor by phone; the unexpected and inexcusable absence of po-

lice protection at the Montgomery terminal; the “severe beating” of “several

of the travelers”; and the unwarranted attack on the “President’s personal

representative, Mr. Seigenthaler, who attempted to rescue a young white

girl.” According to Kennedy, Patterson had assured “the President and the

Federal Government” that state and local officials had the “will, the force,

the men, and the equipment to protect everyone in Alabama.” Through

Seigenthaler, the federal government had offered “to provide marshals and

any other assistance in order to assure that interstate commerce was unim-

peded.” But the governor had rejected the offer of help, insisting that “local

authorities would be completely able to handle any contingency.” “It was

based on this assurance of safe conduct,” the telegram continued, “that the

students boarded the bus in Birmingham on their trip to Montgomery.” In-

deed, the Justice Department had taken “the additional precautionary step of

having the F.B.I. notify the Police Department that these students were com-

ing and ask the police to take all necessary steps for their protection. The

F.B.I. was informed and in turn notified us that all necessary steps had been

If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus 223

taken and that no action on our part was necessary.” That the riot ensued

nonetheless was proof that the federal government now had “no alternative

but to order . . . United States officers to begin to assist state and local

authorities in the protection of persons and property and vehicles in Ala-

bama.” The telegram also informed Patterson that the Justice Department

planned to send a team of FBI investigators to Montgomery and to seek an

injunction against the Klan and any other groups “interfering with interstate

travel by buses.”

As it turned out, Kennedy received a call from Patterson a few minutes

before the telegram was actually sent. After being assured that “everything

seemed to be under control in Alabama,” Kennedy read the text of the tele-

gram over the phone. Caught off guard by the announcement that federal

intervention was imminent, Patterson insisted that Alabama needed no “out-

side help,” prompting Kennedy to ask him to prove it. “Why don’t you call

out the National Guard and make it unnecessary for us to take any outside

action?” Kennedy asked. Alarmed by this suggestion, Patterson stammered:

“This is unnecessary. This will be a matter of embarrassment to me. I will

have to take steps to defend myself politically.” Kennedy responded, with

some sympathy, that he understood the political constraints of Alabama poli-

tics, but he added that the Justice Department could not allow political con-

siderations to interfere with a timely resolution of the crisis. “You are going

to have to paddle your own boat,” he warned.

Later in the evening, Patterson issued a public response to Kennedy’s

telegram. After claiming that he had “no sympathy for lawbreakers whether

they be agitators from outside Alabama or inside-the-state troublemakers,”

he stated that Alabama law enforcement officials needed “no help—from the

Federal Government, from ‘interested citizens,’ or anyone else.” He then

went on to qualify his pledge of protection. “While we will do our utmost to

keep the public highways clear and to guard against all disorder,” he de-

clared, “we cannot escort bus loads or carloads of rabble rousers about our

state from city to city for the avowed purpose of disobeying our laws, flout-

ing our customs and traditions, and creating racial incidents. Such unlawful

acts serve only to further enrage our populace. I have no use for these agita-

tors or their kind.” While acknowledging that Alabama officials had “the

duty and the desire to protect human lives no matter who is involved,” he

insisted that “how we do it is a matter for us to determine.”

The full text of the statements, detailed accounts of the riot, and graphic

pictures of injured newsmen and Freedom Riders appeared in newspapers

across the nation on Sunday morning. What did not appear, however, was

any hint of the behind-the-scenes drama being played out among movement

activists in Montgomery, Nashville, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Washington.

For the Freedom Riders themselves, the biggest story of May 20 was the

unreported transformation of a limited project into a full-fledged movement.

The seeds of this transformation had been planted the previous Tuesday

224 Freedom Riders

when the Nashville students had stepped in for the CORE Riders, but it was

not until Saturday afternoon that a true movement culture began to take

hold among the Riders.

As the survivors of the riot gathered at the Reverend Seay’s house, the

scene began to resemble a religious revival. Far from scaring the Riders off,

the riot seemed to have forged a renewed sense of common purpose and

solidarity. Surviving a trial by fire had somehow dispelled the mystique of

massive resistance, and despite fears of future violence, as well as concern for

those who had already been injured, the importance of sustaining the Free-

dom Ride was clearer than ever. The presence of John Lewis and other ban-

daged martyrs only served to reinforce the growing realization that the stakes

had been raised and that there could be no turning back in the face of danger.

Indeed, even for the Riders who missed the movement revival at Seay’s house,

the necessity of carrying on was becoming an article of faith. Speaking from

his hospital bed at St. Jude’s, Jim Zwerg assured reporters that “these beat-

ings cannot deter us from our purpose. We are not martyrs or publicity-

seekers. We want only equality and justice, and we will get it. We will continue

our journey one way or another. We are prepared to die. “ Lying one floor

below, in St. Jude’s black ward, William Barbee echoed Zwerg’s pledge: “As

soon as we’re recovered from this, we’ll start again. . . . We’ll take all the

South has to throw and still come back for more.”

This collective resurrection of the spirit sprang from many sources, some

intensely personal, others largely contextual, but no element of the Freedom

Riders’ resolve was more important than the network of support sustained by

Nash and the movement volunteers back in Nashville. In the critical hours

following the riot, the Nashville office was a beehive of activity, dispensing

words of comfort and encouragement to the Riders and mobilizing a broad

coalition of supporters. Delivered in a flurry of phone calls, Nash’s message

to the national civil rights community was unequivocal: The movement could

not afford a second failed Freedom Ride. If the white supremacist vigilantes

and irresponsible officials in Alabama got their way, the entire movement

would lose momentum and credibility. Surely it was time for movement leaders

to put aside whatever reservations they had about the wisdom of the Free-

dom Ride and rally behind the students in Montgomery.

By late afternoon Nash’s personal appeals had brought several key orga-

nizations and individuals on board. In Nashville, Jim Lawson promptly vol-

unteered to go to Montgomery to join the Ride, as did Nash herself. In

Birmingham, Shuttlesworth, who had tried to join the Ride earlier in the

day, also agreed to travel to Montgomery to help the students regroup. In

Atlanta, Ella Baker and other SNCC leaders promised to recruit a new batch

of Freedom Riders if needed; and in Washington, NAG, the SNCC affiliate

that had contributed Hank Thomas to the original CORE Ride, made a similar

pledge. Indeed, several NAG stalwarts, including John Moody and Paul

Dietrich, were already on their way to Alabama. Remorseful about his earlier

If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus 225

recalcitrance, Moody was determined to be in the thick of things this time.

Thomas himself was in New York recovering from his injuries, but as soon

as he heard the news reports of the Saturday morning riot, he too made plans

to fly to Montgomery.

All of this support was welcome, but Nash knew that none of it would

matter if she failed to enlist the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

and King in the cause. To this point, King and his advisors had been wary of

supporting the second Freedom Ride, as the May 17 SCLC meeting at

Shuttlesworth’s parsonage had revealed. Thus she was greatly relieved to

discover that King agreed with her assessment of the seriousness of the situ-

ation. The SCLC president was in Chicago to deliver a speech, but after

conferring with Nash, Abernathy, and Walker he decided to cancel his en-

gagement and return to Atlanta. By late Saturday afternoon Nash and the

three SCLC leaders had worked out a plan to hold a mass meeting at

Abernathy’s church in Montgomery on Sunday evening. King, who had been

in Montgomery as recently as May 11, would fly in to deliver the keynote

address, and other movement leaders, including Shuttlesworth, would also

speak. The purpose of the mass meeting was simple. By presenting a show of

solidarity and commitment, the nonviolent movement would seize the ini-

tiative, demonstrating that it could not be intimidated by segregationist hoo-

ligans. Other, more difficult matters—such as the advisability of mobilizing a

whole wave of Freedom Rides—could be decided later. But the message that

the Nashville students were not alone had to be delivered immediately and

forcefully.

Realizing that SCLC’s approach to nonviolent direct action was more

cautious than SNCC’s, Nash had some misgivings about bringing King to

Montgomery. Indeed, using his prestige and celebrity to shore up the Free-

dom Ride was hardly in keeping with SNCC’s or the Nashville student

movement’s democratic ethos. She could only hope that King and other SCLC

leaders would come to see the wisdom of SNCC’s grassroots philosophy in-

stead of trying to co-opt the students’ energies. To some extent, she faced

the same problem with Jim Farmer and CORE. When she called Farmer to

enlist his support and cooperation, he too promised to fly to Montgomery,

adding that he would immediately dispatch additional CORE Riders to Ala-

bama, but, as she suspected, his motives involved more than concern for the

future of the Freedom Ride. “Quite frankly,” Farmer acknowledged in his

autobiography, “although I welcomed the intervention of SNCC, a concern

burned within me. I could not let CORE’s new program slip from its grasp

and be taken over by others.” Consequently, he wasted no time in ordering

his staff to “recruit, train, and send to Montgomery a contingent of young

CORE members from New Orleans.” Much of Farmer’s competitive drive

was, of course, directed at King. Still smarting from the SCLC leader’s usur-

pation of the nonviolent movement during the bus boycott, Farmer was de-

termined to share the spotlight in Montgomery.