CORE members. James Farmer · Gordon Carey. SNCC and Nashville Student Movement The ICC failed to enforce its ruling, and Jim Crow travel laws remained in Southern local and state police considered the actions of the Freedom . mob awaiting the riders at the bus terminal, as well as on the route to Montgomery.
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I was fully involved in our program and considered our effort as something apart from the mess in the capital. We saw ourselves as supporting US policy and we believed in it.
- Vers labîme ? (French Edition);
- Last Men Out: The True Story of Americas Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam.
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- Get On the Bus: The Freedom Riders of : NPR!
I had not, and he said that it was north of Ban Na. Our program was expanding into that area, and he needed me up there to keep things organized. And, with that, Landry said that I was to leave in a few hours. The accommodations at Phou Song turned out to be similar to Ban Na, but the setting was surprisingly different. Again, I found myself watching a Helio depart, leaving me, this time, in a Hmong village high on a mountain in north Laos. Phou Song was bigger than Ban Na. It occupied less than a third of a large, flat area more than halfway up the mountain for which it was named.
It was near the edge of a precipitous drop into the valley. Because of the large open space next to and behind the village, Phou Song had a large drop zone and a landing strip that could easily accommodate twin-engine STOL aircraft. Thanks to the AID program, there was a warehouse for storing rice, clothing, and other materiel that was regularly distributed to nearby villages. Phou Song was more secure than Ban Na because the only approaches to it were easy to monitor and block.
The nearest PL camps were at the far end of the valley and on the other side from our village. The majority of the men from the area were fighters. The team and I occupied two houses near the warehouse at the edge of the airstrip. I quickly decided that I liked Phou Song. My work at Phou Song was more demanding than at Ban Na. Besides the routine things like logistics and training, I had to move around constantly. I would cable Landry explaining that I had to go to this or that village and needed a Helio for the day, and early the next morning, one would arrive.
Prasert frequently went with me, but, after I got to know the region, I sometimes went alone. On those occasions a lot depended on the availability of French or sometimes even English speakers. In the villages that I visited, we would talk about what nearby enemy units were doing and about needs of all kinds. We supplied everything from weapons and ammunition to schoolbooks, medicines, rice and salt, uniforms, building materials, and money. For some of these things, I was simply the middleman making arrangements for an AID delivery to a given village.
Sometimes, no plane was available or the place I was going had no landing strip, so I would take a Hmong patrol and a couple of the PARU and walk. We limited these walks to distances that could be covered in less than two days, round trip. More than that took too much of my time. These trips were especially challenging. From Phou Song, the bulk of the walking was strenuous—it was either up or down. Moreover, it was the middle of the rainy season, and the frequent rainstorms made the mountain trails muddy and slippery. The first times out were real tests.
Everyone was watching to see how the foreigner would handle the trails. Suspecting that I would have a hard time, they made it as easy as possible for me. I took no pack, just my weapon and web belt. The small Hmong soldiers carried packs plus their weapons and food and water. Shortly after I got to Phou Song, I scheduled a plane to take me to three villages in our region.
At the second village, a colleague was waiting for me. He said that a Helio had gone down and that the pilot might be injured. Members of a Hmong patrol thought that they had seen where the Helio hit the side of the mountain. This was a serious situation. If a plane or chopper went down, every possible effort would immediately be made to rescue those aboard. We all knew that if something happened, our colleagues would come after us.
We decided to lead a Hmong patrol to the crash site. I wrote a note informing Landry of our decision and gave it to my Helio pilot to deliver. Eight Hmong accompanied us. There was a sense of urgency. We maintained a fairly fast pace and took few rests. The first couple of hours we headed downhill toward the valley below. The Hmong thought that the plane was on the far side of the mountain in front of us.
There were PL positions near there, so a chopper rescue was not feasible. The jungle on the valley floor was thick. There was a trail of sorts, but the undergrowth had almost closed in. We had to cross the valley and head up the mountain in front of us. Despite the terrain, we managed to traverse the area in less than two hours. At mid-afternoon, we started to climb. We were having no trouble keeping up with the Hmong. We climbed for about three hours until almost nightfall, and then started looking for a place to spend the night. We came to a clearing and saw a hut at the far end.
It was abandoned, and we moved in. That night, I did not fall asleep right away. I thought about where I was and what I was doing. I was more isolated and vulnerable than I had ever been, but I was doing what I definitely thought was right. I felt lucky to have the chance that only a few ever have of actually making a difference. I was confident that I could handle whatever might come up and felt sure that the patrol would succeed. The next day we started climbing again. Two Hmong had left at daybreak to do a reconnaissance above us.
As we pushed ahead, I was struck by how much we depended on the Hmong. We had no idea where the plane might be and no landmarks to use to get there—or back. They realized the situation, but they also counted on us for the support we could call in. There was great mutual trust and respect. An hour or so after we started, the two scouts reappeared.
I could tell by their faces that the news was bad. They talked excitedly with the patrol leader and then he gave it to us in French. The pilot was dead—he had probably died on impact as the front of the plane was smashed in. There had been no fire. The two had seen activity far below them that caused them to think a PL unit might be moving up the mountain from the opposite direction to check out the crash site. We had no idea how many PL might be coming, but prudence dictated a retreat.
We started back, and the walking was easy because we were headed down and around the mountain. Then we heard the welcome sound of a Helio. My colleague pulled out his emergency line-of-sight radio. The pilot must have had his mike open because he picked us up right away. But we received more bad news. Intelligence reporting available in Vientiane indicated that PL units had moved into the valley that we had come through.
We were cut off. Taking no chances, Landry planned to get us out by helicopter as soon as possible. It took us 10 minutes to retrace our steps to a clearing higher up and put out a marker—the patrol leader had one in his pack that he used when receiving parachute drops while on patrol. One Hmong was posted on the trail just above the clearing with instructions to come running when he saw the chopper. None of us wanted the helicopter to stay on the ground for more than a couple of minutes.
Freedom Riders
We called the Helio and they told us that the pilot was en route and would be in position in five or 10 minutes. As soon as a large cloud filled the valley and obscured vision, the chopper came in. We heard it before we saw it. The pilot hugged the side of the mountain, then swung around and touched down right in the middle of the clearing. He even had the door facing us. The Air America pilots were truly outstanding—they had incredible skills and guts. Although it made perfect sense at the time, we had gone off on what turned out to be an unauthorized dangerous mission.
If an Agency officer were to fall into enemy hands, there would be hell to pay in Washington. A lot of nervous people had been following developments when it became known the night before that we were out looking for the downed pilot. Lair and Landry were waiting for us in Vientiane. They looked relieved and happy to see us. His typically low key comment belied the concern and the responsibility he felt very strongly. We were two of the eight young American officers for whom he was accountable. These young officers were spread thinly and worked hard—we would not have had it any other way.
We took our losses even in those early days—both Agency officers and the pilots who were supporting us. But we got the job done. Friends, who worked directly with Landry in the office, later told me that he had been genuinely concerned and really torn as the situation developed. On the one hand, he was frustrated and irritated that we had made the decision on our own to leave with the patrol. He knew that it would be dangerous. But he also was proud of us. In the end, he was so relieved that we were back safely that he did not yell at us.
I spent a few additional weeks in Phou Song working to expand our program. But time soon ran out on us. As a result of political decisions in Washington relating to the Geneva Protocol on the Neutrality of Laos, word came that we were to be withdrawn from Laos. This was a bitter pill. All of our observations and reporting had indicated that the VC had no intention of pulling any of their units out of Laos.
To the contrary, their activities, especially in east-central Laos, were increasing. Despite the evidence that we had provided, the State Department was determined to live by the conditions of the Protocol that Ambassador Harriman had signed. My fellow Agency officers and I argued—successfully, it turned out—that it would be wrong to leave the Hmong high and dry. To get there from Vientiane, one could take a five-minute flight or catch a ferry across the river—the ferry was just a small tug-like craft with an underpowered engine. The arrival of the gaggle of foreigners was a jolt to what had been a sleepy little town.
The local population adjusted quickly, however, and welcomed the boost that our presence gave to the economy. Among other things, the sale of Singha beer jumped noticeably. Udorn, a much larger Thai town about 50 kilometers further south, had a large airport with a long concrete runway built by AID.
Udorn became a major US airbase and staging area for combat and supply flights into Laos in support of US efforts to support the Lao government. Eventually, in early , Lair and Landry moved their program headquarters to a new facility in a restricted-access compound at Udorn airbase. Their effort had grown too large to be managed out of a rented house in Nong Khai. Meanwhile, in late September , Landry told me that I would be taking over their project in the Panhandle, which was in its early stages. The North Vietnamese were occupying and exploiting a large chunk of eastern Laos, and we needed information on exactly what they were doing.
The Panhandle area stretches from just north of Thakhek, a small Lao town on the Mekong River, to about midway between Savannakhet and Pakse to the south. It is bounded on the west by the Mekong, which is also the border with Thailand, and on the east by the Annamite mountain range, which forms the border with North Vietnam.
I had not expected to get a project to handle on my own, and the prospect was appealing. I would be working with ethnic Lao, and the objective was to collect intelligence on the VC. The operation was in the process of shifting its headquarters from Thakhek, to Nakhon Phanom, across the Mekong in Thailand.
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Nakhon Phanom was a quiet, pretty town of several thousand inhabitants. Some streets were paved. My house was near the airport, which had a laterite runway capable of taking large cargo planes. Thai Airways flights arrived twice weekly from Bangkok. Lao Panhandle, of increasing strategic importance to North Vietnam. I spent almost 20 months operating out of Nakhon Phanom. During that time, no one ever asked me what I was doing. My cover—advisor to the Border Police—was backstopped only minimally, but no one seemed too worried.
Without fanfare, I had moved from being assigned to Laos to being assigned in Thailand. The Agency took care of all the paperwork so I was not illegal. As the VC violations of the Protocol increased and were verified by photography and signals intelligence, Ambassador Harriman finally conceded that the communists were not abiding by the rules. Accordingly, restrictions on our activities gradually loosened. Early in my tour at Nakhon Phanom, I would have my team leaders come to Thailand to met with me. Then, I began making trips into Laos at night. Finally, I began to cross the river into Laos regularly during the day.
I never carried a passport or other identification. No one, least of all the border officials, ever questioned me about what I was doing. Almost all Thais were concerned about the communist threat. They welcomed our support and resources and were eager to help in any way.
I also had a houseboy named Whet. This was to be my staff, and we got along well. Much of my first day was spent checking equipment, signing the required forms about gear and administrative matters, and looking around Nakhon Phanom. The next day, my predecessor walked me through the operational aspects of my responsibilities, beginning with the location of each PM team and his opinions about the mixed bag of team leaders. Ambrose, who interpreted at each meeting with the team leaders, also knew them well and was to be a great help in the months to come.
This introductory briefing took the whole day. I became intimately familiar with the geographic coordinates of many places in central Laos—within months I could cite from memory the coordinates of specific towns or road junctions. From north to south, I was briefed on each team that we were supporting. My predecessor, who had started the project from scratch, had been obliged to work closely with Lao military officers, who were also a mixed bag—all corrupt to some degree. The team leaders, often nominated by the military commander of a given area, tended to be former military officers who allegedly had retired.
Some were refugees who had been Nai Khongs or Nai Bans from key villages in the areas where they were now monitoring enemy activities. Team members were all local villagers. Some had been displaced by the communist takeover of the areas along the border with North Vietnam, while others were from areas along the Mekong.
Some had been in the FAR. The seven teams varied in size, from 15 men to more than The level of training varied widely from team to team, depending on the quality and skills of the team leader. Each member had at least rudimentary weapons training—all were armed and had uniforms and boots. We also supplied medicines and rice by airdrop. All were paid more than Lao military personnel. Pay was according to rank or position. The team leader received cash and then distributed the pay to his group.
Each team had a radio and stayed in regular usually daily contact with us. Two of our PARU were radio operators, and they maintained the base station for our project. The 17th parallel—the demarcation line between North and South Vietnam—touched the southeastern edge of the Laotian Panhandle. This chunk of territory was of strong strategic interest to the North. At the time I arrived, the United States was just beginning to grapple with the importance of North Vietnamese control and use of the network of dirt roads and trails running along the eastern side of the Panhandle from north to south, later widely known as the Ho Chi-Minh Trail.
The French-built road network in the Panhandle was sparse. Two passes through the Annamites provided access for roads to and from Vietnam. Beginning in the same area, Route 12 moved eastward along the bottom of the Nakay Plateau and through the Mu Gia Pass. Further south, Route 9 headed east from Savannakhet and ran straight across the Panhandle, touching South Vietnam just below the demarcation line at the 17th parallel. Route 13, the only north-south road in the Panhandle, stretched all the way from Vientiane to Pakse, following the Lao side of the Mekong River.
These roads all had crushed laterite surfaces, but none were reliable for year-round travel, primarily because of flooding during the rainy season. Decisionmakers in Washington had already begun discussing strategic options for cutting the North Vietnamese supply route through Laos. One proposal by the US military entailed fortifying and defending Route 9, which ran straight across the Panhandle. Generally speaking, those of us on the ground at the time believed that trucks were limited to the French-built road system for transporting anything in the Panhandle.
We would come to know better. Even as early as , the North Vietnamese were building and improving roads between Route 12 and Route 9 that would soon take truck convoys. Moreover, during the dry season, jeeps and sometimes trucks could move overland off the limited road network. Sitting in Nakhon Phanom, I quickly realized that the Trail was the problem.
My goal became to position teams at key points in the easternmost parts of the Panhandle to clandestinely monitor all traffic along the roads and trails being used by the VC after they entered Laos via one of the two passes through the Annamites. None of the teams had previously been located in positions that enabled systematic intelligence collection. Some intelligence was being provided, but it was sporadic and of minimal use, coming primarily from random patrols and villager debriefings.
Looking at my maps, it was not hard to select the points where I wanted to establish road-watch sites. The Nape and Mu Gia passes were obvious locations, but it would be difficult, I knew, to get teams to those sites, especially since I would be working from the Thai side of the Mekong. But with goals and a plan, we would be moving from a passive organizational stage into a much more active and risky effort. During my first month in Nakhon Phanom, I met with all but one of the team leaders.
Each made the journey to Thakhek and then crossed over to Nakhon Phanom. These meetings became at least monthly events, ones that the leaders rarely missed because they collected their payroll at the same time. Using this as leverage, I was gradually able to develop a personal relationship with each one.
Rainy season movement of supplies in the Panhandle. At those first meetings, I spent a lot of time briefing each leader on our collective mission to establish road-watch sites. As I anticipated, some reacted more favorably than others. It was about a split. It became clear that much cajoling and motivating, or team leader changes, would be required to move those teams to the watch sites. I knew that several would report promptly to their Lao military contacts, and I could expect questions from the latter concerning what I was doing.
I decided that it was time to brief Lair and Landry in detail about my plans for the project. I told them that if we were going to get some useful intelligence, we needed teams—with radios—positioned a lot further east. I said that I thought we could get daily reports on what was moving into Laos via the passes and also would be able to identify which portions were headed straight to South Vietnam.
Landry knew little about the infant project in central Laos, but I piqued his interest. We spent a couple of hours going over specifics. I was pleased that he was so interested and impressed with the depth of the questions he posed. Finally, he told me to draft a cable to CIA Headquarters outlining the project. About 40, he had quite a history. He parachuted into North Vietnam with a team of commandos, intending to blow up a key bridge between Vietnam and China.
That mission was abandoned when the war ended before the plan could be carried out. Pragmatic, smart, and unpretentious, Whitey handled the varied programs with aplomb. Lair and Landry had come to like him, and that was certainly good enough for me. That night, before dinner at his house, Whitey and I talked in general terms, first about my background and then about the project in the Panhandle. His questions revealed that he already had a good idea what the problems were and a feel for what it was like to deal with Laotians. Savvy about Headquarters, he advised me on what I should emphasize in my cable.
After reviewing the draft and suggesting a few changes, he decided it should be sent to Headquarters immediately. Less than a week later, Landry cabled me in Nakhon Phanom to say that Headquarters had agreed to the concept, the goals, and the plan itself. He sounded happy, and I sure was.
The new project had been given an official cryptonym for use in cable traffic: Landry and I both thought it was a good crypt. In early , my activities were still circumscribed by US support for the Geneva Protocol. Nonetheless, meetings with my team leaders started to produce results and I stepped them up.
To improve my access, I traveled to Mukdahan, the Thai town across the Mekong from Savannakhet, for meetings with two team leaders operating in the southern Panhandle. As constraints eased, I slipped into Laos at night for additional meetings with my team leaders to discuss logistics, training, reporting, communications, and team location.
Getting agreement to move their teams into enemy-controlled areas to the east was always touchy. Moving eastward made it even more difficult than usual to confirm team locations and often we just had to take their word for it. Sometimes we could use collateral information to double-check reporting from our teams. If we had overhead coverage of the Mu Gia Pass, for example, we could cross-check it with reporting from a team on the ground along Route Our colleagues in Udorn often did this for us.
I was always pleased when our team reported trucks on a particular road and air coverage on the same day confirmed the position of the convoy. Occasionally, independent reports from villagers could also be used to confirm our road-watch reporting. Food drops also served to confirm team locations. No drop was made unless the proper signal was displayed in the drop zone, and the team had to be there to display the correct signal.
They definitely wanted to receive the rice and supplies and were careful about the coordinates they gave and the signals they were to use. Later, when teams were inserted by chopper, we knew exactly where they were. In about mid, the VC became increasingly aware that our teams were watching them and began using countermeasures. They patrolled areas along the roads that they were using and planted spies in the villages in the area. They gave me a room and I slept. The FBI man did not care about us, but only the bombing. Hughes's general distrust of the FBI's attitude toward civil rights activists was clearly warranted, but — unbeknownst to her — the FBI agent on the scene had actually intervened on the Freedom Riders' behalf.
At his urging, the medical staff agreed to treat all of the injured passengers, black and white, though in the end they failed to do so. When the ambulance full of Freedom Riders arrived at the hospital, a group of Klansmen made an unsuccessful attempt to block the entrance to the emergency room. Later, as the crowd outside the hospital grew to menacing proportions, hospital officials began to panic, especially after several Klansmen threatened to burn the building to the ground.
With nightfall approaching and with no prospect of adequate police protection, the superintendent ordered the Riders to leave the hospital as soon as possible. Hughes and several other Riders were in no shape to leave, but Joe Perkins, the leader of the Greyhound group, had no choice but to comply with the evacuation order. Struggling to conceal his rage, he told the Riders to be ready to leave in twenty minutes, though it actually took him well over an hour to arrange safe passage out of the hospital.
After both the state troopers and the local police refused to provide the Riders with transportation — or even an escort — Bert Bigelow called friends in Washington in a vain effort to get help from the federal government. A few minutes later Perkins placed a frantic call to Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham. A native of the Alabama Black Belt, Shuttlesworth knew enough about towns like Anniston to know that the Freedom Riders were in serious danger. Mobilizing a fleet of eight cars, he planned to lead the rescue mission himself until his longtime bodyguard, Colonel Stone "Buck" Johnson, persuaded him to remain in Birmingham with the Trailways Riders, who had arrived in the city earlier in the afternoon.
Just before the cars left for Anniston, Shuttlesworth reminded Johnson and the other volunteers that this was a nonviolent operation. You must trust God and have faith. Checking triggers and ammunition, they made sure they would be able to defend themselves if the going got rough. While the Riders waited for Shuttlesworth's deacons to make their way across the back roads of the Alabama hill country, the Anniston hospital superintendent grew impatient and reminded Perkins that the interracial group would not be allowed to spend the night in the hospital.
Perhaps, he suggested with a wry smile, they could find refuge in the bus station. Fortunately, the superintendent's mean-spirited suggestion became moot a few minutes later when the rescue mission pulled into the hospital parking lot. With the police holding back the jeering crowd, and with the deacons openly displaying their weapons, the weary but relieved Riders piled into the cars, which promptly drove off into the gathering dusk.
There were some deputies too. You couldn't tell the deputies from the Ku Klux. As the convoy raced toward Birmingham, the Riders peppered their rescuers with questions about the fate of the Trailways group. Perkins's conversation with Shuttlesworth earlier in the afternoon had revealed that the other bus had also run into trouble, but few details had been available.
The deacons themselves knew only part of the story, but even the barest outline was enough to confirm the Riders' worst fears: The attack on the bus in Anniston could not be dismissed as the work of an unorganized mob. As the deacons described what had happened to the Trailways group, the true nature of the Riders' predicament came into focus: With the apparent connivance of law enforcement officials, the organized defenders of white supremacy in Alabama had decided to smash the Freedom Ride with violence, in effect announcing to the world that they had no intention of letting the law, the U.
Constitution, or anything else interfere with the preservation of racial segregation in their sovereign state. The Trailway Riders' ordeal began even before the group left Atlanta. As Peck and the other Riders waited in line to purchase their tickets, they couldn't help noticing that several regular passengers had disappeared from the line after being approached by a group of white men.
The white men themselves — later identified as Alabama Klansmen — eventually boarded the bus, but only a handful of other regular passengers joined them. The Klansmen were beefy, rough-looking characters, mostly in their twenties or thirties, and their hulking presence gave the Riders an uneasy feeling as the bus pulled out. There were seven Freedom Riders scattered throughout the bus: Simeon Booker and his Jet magazine colleague, photographer Ted Gaffney, were also on board.
Seated in the rear of the bus, the two journalists had a close-up view of the entire harrowing journey from Atlanta to Birmingham. He was not exaggerating. The bus was barely out of the Atlanta terminal when the Klansmen began to make threatening remarks. Once the bus passed the state line, the comments intensified, giving the Riders the distinct impression that something might be brewing in Anniston.
Arriving at the Anniston Trailways station approximately an hour after the other Riders had pulled into the Greyhound station, Peck and the Trailways Riders looked around warily before leaving the bus. The waiting room was eerily quiet, and several whites looked away as the unwelcome visitors walked up to the lunch counter. After purchasing a few sandwiches, the Riders walked back to the bus.
Later, while waiting nervously to leave, they heard an ambulance siren but didn't think much of it until the bus driver, John Olan Patterson, who had been talking to several Anniston police officers, vaulted up the steps. Flanked by eight "hoodlums," as Peck later called them, Patterson gave them the news about the Greyhound riot. After a few moments of silence, one of the Riders reminded Patterson that they were interstate passengers who had the right to sit wherever they pleased. Shaking his head in disgust, he exited the bus without a word. But one of the white "hoodlums" soon answered for him: You ain't up north.
You're in Alabama, and niggers ain't nothing here. A second Klansman then struck Harris, who was sitting next to Person in the front section of the bus. Both black Freedom Riders adhered to Gandhian discipline and refused to fight back, but this only encouraged their attackers. Dragging the defenseless students into the aisle, the Klansmen started pummeling them with their fists and kicking them again and again. At this point Peck and Walter Bergman rushed forward from the back to object. As soon as Peck reached the front, one of the attackers turned on him, striking a blow that sent the frail, middle-aged activist reeling across two rows of seats.
Within seconds Bergman, the oldest of the Freedom Riders at sixty-one, suffered a similar blow, falling to the floor with a thud. As blood spurted from their faces, both men tried to shield themselves from further attack, but the Klansmen, enraged by the white Riders' attempt to protect their "nigger" collaborators, proceeded to pound them into a bloody mass. While a pair of Klansmen lifted Peck's head, others punched him in the face until he lost consciousness. By this time Bergman was out cold on the floor, but one frenzied assailant continued to stomp on his chest.
When Frances Bergman begged the Klansman to stop beating her husband, he ignored her plea and called her a "nigger lover. Although Walter Bergman's motionless body blocked the aisle, several Klansmen managed to drag Person and Harris, both barely conscious, to the back of the bus, draping them over the passengers sitting in the backseat. A few seconds later, they did the same to Peck and Bergman, creating a pile of bleeding and bruised humanity that left the rest of the passengers in a momentary state of shock.
Content with their brutal handiwork, the Klansmen then sat down in the middle of the bus to block any further attempts to violate the color line. At this point a black woman riding as a regular passenger begged to be let off the bus, but the Klansmen forced her to stay. And them nigger lovers. Moments later, Patterson, who had left during the melee, returned to the bus, accompanied by a police officer.
After surveying the scene, both men appeared satisfied with the restoration of Jim Crow seating arrangements. Turning toward the Klansmen, the police officer grinned and assured them that Alabama justice was on their side: I ain't seen a thing. Realizing that there was a mob waiting on the main road to Birmingham, the driver kept to the back roads as he headed west.
When none of the Klansmen objected to this detour, the Freedom Riders were puzzled but relieved, thinking that perhaps there were limits to the savagery of the segregationists after all, even in the wilds of eastern Alabama. What they did not know, of course, was that the Klansmen were simply saving them for the welcoming party already gathering in the shadows of downtown Birmingham.
During the next two hours, as the bus rolled toward Birmingham, the Klansmen continued to taunt and torment the Riders.
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One man brandished a pistol, a second threatened the Riders with a steel pipe, and three others served as "sentries," blocking access to the middle and front sections of the bus. As Booker recalled the scene, one of the sentries was "a pop-eyed fellow who kept taunting: Over the next few minutes, as the article was passed from Klansman to Klansman, the atmosphere became increasingly tense. By the time the bus reached the outskirts of the city, Peck and the other injured Riders had regained consciousness, but since the Klansmen would not allow any of the Riders to leave their seats or talk among themselves, there was no opportunity for Peck to prepare the group for the impending onslaught.
He could only hope that each Rider would be able to draw upon some combination of inner strength and past experience, some reservoir of courage and responsibility that would sustain the Freedom Ride and protect the viability and moral integrity of the nonviolent movement. Though battered and bleeding, and barely able to walk, Peck was determined to set an example for his fellow Freedom Riders.
As the designated testers at the Birmingham stop, he and Person would be the first to confront the fully assembled power of Alabama segregationists. The terror-filled ride from Atlanta was a clear indication that they could expect some measure of violence in Birmingham, but at this point Peck and the other Trailways Riders had no detailed knowledge of what had happened to the Greyhound group in Anniston two hours earlier.
They thought they were prepared for the worst. In actuality, however, they had no reliable way of gauging what they were up against, no way of appreciating the full implications of challenging Alabama's segregationist institutions, and no inkling of how far Birmingham's ultra-segregationists would go to protect the sanctity of Jim Crow.
This was not just the Deep South — it was Birmingham, where close collaboration between the Ku Klux Klan and law enforcement officials was a fact of life. The special agents in the Birmingham FBI field office, as well as their superiors in Washington, possessed detailed information on this collaboration and could have warned the Freedom Riders. But they chose to remain silent. The dire consequences of the bureau's refusal to intervene were compounded by the active involvement of FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe. In the final minutes before the Trailways group's arrival, Rowe helped ensure that the plot to "welcome" the Freedom Riders would actually be carried out.
The plan called for Rowe and the other Klansmen to initiate the attack at the Greyhound station, where the first group of Freedom Riders was expected to arrive, but news of the Anniston bombing did not reach Birmingham until midafternoon, just minutes before the arrival of the Trailways bus. A frantic call from police headquarters to Rowe, who quickly spread the word, alerted the Klansmen waiting near the Greyhound station that a bus of Freedom Riders was about to arrive at the Trailways station, three blocks away. The "welcoming committee" had just enough time to regroup at the Trailways station.
Years later Rowe recalled the mad rush across downtown Birmingham: Everything was deserted; no police officers were to be seen except one on a street corner. He stepped off and let us go by, and we barged into the bus station and took it over like an army of occupation. There were Klansmen in the waiting room, in the rest rooms, in the parking area.
By the time Peck and company arrived, the Klansmen and their police allies were all in place, armed and ready to do what had to be done to protect the Southern way of life. Police dispatchers, following the agreed-upon plan, had cleared the "target" area: For the next fifteen minutes there would be no police presence in or near the Trailways station. The only exceptions were two plainclothes detectives who were in the crowd to monitor the situation and to make sure that the Klansmen left the station before the police arrived.
Since it was Sunday, and Mother's Day, there were few bystanders, aside from a handful of news reporters who had been tipped off that something big was about to happen at the Trailways station. Despite the semisecret nature of the operation, the organizers could not resist the temptation to let the outside world catch a glimpse of Alabama manhood in action.
One of the reporters on hand was Howard K. Smith and his CBS colleagues were investigating New York Times columnist Harrison Salisbury's charges that Alabama's largest city was consumed by lawlessness and racial oppression. A Louisiana native with considerable experience in the Deep South, Smith was more than intrigued when he received a Saturday night call from Dr. Fields, the president of the ultra-conservative National States Rights Party NSRP , an organization known to promote a virulent strain of white supremacist and anti-Semitic extremism. Identifying himself simply as "Fields," the arch segregationist urged Smith to hang around the downtown bus stations "if he wanted to see some real action.
A gun-toting Birmingham chiropractor with close ties to the infamous Georgia extremist J. Stoner, Fields himself had every intention of taking part in the action. Along with Stoner, who had driven over from Atlanta for the occasion, and several other NSRP stalwarts, Fields showed up at the Greyhound station on Sunday afternoon armed and ready for the bloodletting — even though Klan leader Hubert Page warned him to stay away.
Page and his police accomplices were having enough trouble controlling their own forces without having to worry about Fields and his crew of professional troublemakers. With Police Chief Jamie Moore out of the city and Connor lying low in an effort to distance himself from the impending violence, Detective Tom Cook was in charge of the operation, but Cook did not share Page's concern.
Connor — who spent Sunday morning at city hall, barely a stone's throw away from the Greyhound station — was probably the only man in Birmingham with the power to call the whole thing off. But he was not about to do so. Resisting the entreaties of several friends, including his Methodist pastor, John Rutland, who warned him that joining forces with the Klan was a big mistake, he cast his lot with the extremists. He knew that the welcoming party might backfire — that it could complicate the mayoral campaign of his political ally Art Hanes, that Birmingham might even become a second Little Rock, a city besieged by federal troops — but he simply could not bring himself to let the Freedom Riders off the hook.
He had been waiting too long for an opportunity to confront the Yankee agitators on his own turf. It was time to let Earl Warren, the Kennedys, the Communists, and all the other meddling Southhaters know that the loyal sons of Alabama were ready to fight and die for white supremacy and states' rights. It was time for the blood to flow. As soon as the bus pulled into the Trailways terminal, the Klansmen on board raced down the aisle to be near the front door.
Following a few parting taunts — one man screamed, "You damn Communists, why don't you go back to Russia. You're a shame to the white race" — they hustled down the steps and disappeared into the crowd. They had done their job; the rest was up to their Klan brethren, several of whom were waiting expectantly in front of the terminal.
The Klansmen's hurried exit was a bit unnerving, but as Peck and the other Freedom Riders peered out at the crowd there was no sign of any weapons. One by one, the Riders filed off the bus and onto the unloading platform, where they began to retrieve their luggage. Although there were several rough-looking men standing a few feet from the platform, there was no clear indication that an attack was imminent.
After a few moments of hesitation, Peck and Person walked toward the white waiting room to begin testing the terminal's facilities. In his memoir, Peck recalled the intensity of the scene, especially his concern for the safety of his black colleague. Person had grown up in the Deep South; he had recently served sixteen days in jail for his part in the Atlanta sit-ins, and he had already been beaten up earlier in the day.
Nevertheless, neither he nor Peck was fully prepared for what was about to happen. Moments after the two Freedom Riders entered the waiting room and approached the whites-only lunch counter, one of the waiting Klansmen pointed to the cuts on Peck's face and the caked blood on his shirt and screamed out that Person, who was walking in front of Peck, deserved to die for attacking a white man.
At this point, Peck tried to explain that Person was not the man who had attacked him, adding: After an Eastview Klansman named Gene Reeves pushed Person toward the colored waiting room, the young black Freedom Rider gamely continued walking toward the white lunch counter but was unable to sidestep a second Klansman who shoved him up against a concrete wall. When Peck rushed over to help Person to his feet, several Klansmen grabbed both men by the shoulders and pushed them into a dimly lit corridor leading to a loading platform.
In the corridor more than a dozen whites, some armed with lead or iron pipes and others with oversized key rings, pounced on the two Riders, punching and kicking them repeatedly. Before long, the assault turned into a chaotic free-for-all with "fists and arms Running into the street, he staggered onto a city bus and eventually found his way to Fred Shuttlesworth's parsonage. In the meantime Peck bore the brunt of the attack, eventually losing consciousness and slumping to the floor in a pool of blood.
The fracas had been moved to the back corridor in an effort to avoid the reporters and news photographers roaming the white waiting room, but several newsmen, including Howard K. Smith, witnessed at least part of the attack. Smith, who had only been in Birmingham for a few days, could hardly believe his eyes as the rampaging Klansmen and NSRP "storm troopers" swarmed over the two Freedom Riders.
But he soon discovered that this was only the beginning of one of the bloodiest afternoons in Birmingham's history. While Peck and Person were being assaulted in the corridor, the other Riders searched for a refuge.
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Jerry Moore and Herman Harris avoided detection by losing themselves in the crowd and slipping away just before the assaults began. Frances Bergman, at her husband's insistence, boarded a city bus moments after their arrival, but Walter himself was unable to escape the mob's fury.
Still woozy from his earlier beating, with blood still caked on his clothing, he bravely followed Peck and Person into the white waiting room. After witnessing the initial assault on his two colleagues, he searched in vain for a policeman who could help them, but soon he too was knocked to the floor by an enraged Klansman.
When Simeon Booker entered the terminal a few seconds later, he saw the bloodied and defenseless professor crawling on his hands and knees. Recoiling from the grisly scene, Booker retreated to the street, where he found a black cabdriver who agreed to whisk him and Ted Gaffney away to safety. Others were less fortunate. Several white men attacked Ike Reynolds, kicking and stomping him before heaving his semiconscious body into a curbside trash bin. In the confusion, the mob also attacked a number of bystanders misidentified as Freedom Riders.
One of the victims was actually a Klansman named L. Earle, who had the misfortune of coming out of the men's room at the wrong time. Attacked by fellow Klansmen who failed to recognize him, Earle suffered several deep head gashes and ended up in the hospital. The last person to leave the bus, Spicer was unaware of the melee inside the station until she and Webb encountered a group of pipewielding rioters in the baggage area.
Freedom Riders - Wikipedia
One of the men, undercover FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe, told Spicer to "get the hell out of here," and she escaped harm, running into the street for help. But Rowe and three others, including an NSRP member, immediately surrounded Webb and proceeded to pummel him with everything from their fists to a baseball bat. Webb fought back but was soon overwhelmed as several more white men joined in. Dozens of others looked on, some yelling, "Kill the nigger. During the allotted fifteen minutes, the violence had spread to the sidewalks and streets surrounding the Trailways station, making it difficult to get the word to all of the Klansmen and NSRP members involved in the riot.
But by the time the police moved in to restore order, virtually all of the rioters had left the area. Despite Self's warning, Rowe and those attacking Webb were among the last to leave.