woman who saw him lying on the street called an ambulance, but none would come. For a long time he sat in a parked car in a state of semi-shock, the blood streaming from his mouth and nose. A reporter again suggested to Police Commissioner Sullivan that Zwerg get medical attention. Sullivan retorted: “He hasn’t requested it.”
One Negro student, William Barbee, from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, was knocked unconscious by a group using baseball bats. He lay on the loading platform of the bus terminal for twenty minutes before a Negro ambulance came. He would spend several weeks in the hospital.
Accounts vary about how long it took the police to arrive after the violence began. The Associated Press reported that it took them twenty minutes. Even after their arrival the violence continued; the police then used three or four tear gas bombs to disperse the mob, which had grown to over a thousand. Governor Patterson issued a statement in which he said that “state highway patrolmen responded in force seconds after they were called. Within five minutes, we had sixty-five state patrolmen on the scene. Officers restored order quickly…”
As the news came to Washington, Robert Kennedy telephoned Governor Patterson, but was told by a secretary that the governor was out of town, that no one knew where he was or when he would return. The Attorney General now took several moves: he had Justice Department attorneys go into federal district court in Montgomery to enjoin the KKK, the National States Rights Party, and anyone supporting them from interfering with peaceful interstate travel; he had the F.B.I. send in an extra team to intensify its investigation of the violence connected with the Freedom Ride; he sent a contingent of U.S. marshals to Montgomery under Deputy Attorney General Byron White.
President John F. Kennedy issued a statement in which he called the situation “a source of the deepest concern,” asked Alabama to prevent further violence, expressed the wish that citizens would refrain “from any action which would in any way tend to provoke further outbreaks,” and said that he hoped local officials would meet their responsibilities, that the United States “intends to meet its.”
Their heads bandaged, their wounds treated, the Freedom Riders stayed overnight in Montgomery, in the homes of local Negroes. The next day was Sunday, May 21, and they all appeared at Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in Montgomery for a mass meeting to be held that evening. Martin Luther King, Jr., flew in from Chicago to speak at the meeting. Over 1200 Negroes and a few whites were there. In the church basement, the Freedom Riders gathered and clasped hands. Someone called out: “Everybody say Freedom!” The group responded. “Say it again!” someone shouted, and the cry “Freedom!” went up once more in the church basement. Then they all went upstairs and sat on the platform as the meeting began.
A crowd of whites, gathering outside the church, began throwing bottles and rocks at the church door. National Guardsmen stood by, for the Governor had that day declared martial law, and some local police were on duty. A group of U.S. marshals faced the crowd. After a while the marshals lobbed a few tear gas bombs into the crowd and it thinned out. But it was still too dangerous to let people come out of the church.
While all this was going on, two Atlanta students, who had heard about the violence that noon and had immediately taken a Greyhound bus for Montgomery, made their way through the National Guardsmen into the church. One of them was Frank Holloway, a SNCC worker, who later described that night in Abernathy’s First Baptist Church:
Inside were three or four times as many people as the church was supposed to hold, and it was very hot and uncomfortable. Some people were trying to sleep, but there was hardly room for anybody to turn around. Dr. King, other leaders, and the Freedom Riders were circulating through the church talking to people and trying to keep their spirits up. But it was a relief and like a haven to be among friends.…
Everyone stayed in the church until six the next morning and then left.
The students planned now to continue the Ride into Mississippi and then on to New Orleans. While they waited in Montgomery for several days, staying at the homes of Negro families there, more students arrived to join them—from Nashville, Atlanta, Washington. Five CORE people came into Montgomery from New Orleans. Twenty-seven Riders were now ready to go on to Jackson, Mississippi, where Governor Ross Barnett had said: “The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him.”
At seven-thirty in the morning on Wednesday, May 24, with National Guardsmen lining both sides of the street near the bus terminal, twelve Freedom Riders (eleven Negro, one white), accompanied by six Guardsmen and sixteen newspapermen, left Montgomery for Jackson. Before leaving, they tasted victory by eating in the “white” cafeteria at the Trailways terminal. On the road, a convoy of three airplanes, two helicopters, and seven patrol cars accompanied the bus while, inside, James Lawson held a workshop on nonviolence. On arrival in Jackson, escorted into the city by National Guardsmen, the group was arrested trying to use white rest rooms and waiting rooms. The charges were the customary ones for civil rights demonstrators: breach of peace, refusal to obey an officer.
Several hours after the arrest of the first contingent of Riders in the Jackson terminal, the rest of the group, including James Farmer, arrived from Montgomery, also with National Guard escort, and entered the Jackson bus terminal. Frank Holloway wrote later in New South about this experience:
Behind all these escorts, I felt like the President of the United States touring Russia or something. … At the door of the waiting room a policeman stood there like the doorman of the Waldorf Astoria and opened the door for us. … I guess the crooks in the city had a field day because all the Jackson police were at the bus station… opening doors for us….
Standing in line at the terminal cafeteria, the Riders in this second group were arrested too, and joined their friends in the city jail. All twenty-seven were found guilty, given two-month suspended sentences, and fined $200. They decided to go to prison rather than pay, and were taken to the Hinds County jail across the street. “When we went in,” Holloway recalls, we were met by some of the meanest looking, tobacco-chewing lawmen I have ever seen. They ordered us around like a bunch of dogs and I really began to feel like I was in a Mississippi jail.” Then they were transferred to the penal farm out in the country:
When we got there we met several men in ten-gallon hats, looking like something out of an old Western, with rifles in their hands, staring at us.… Soon they took us out to a room, boys on one side and girls on the other. One by one they took us into another room for questioning.… There were about eight guards with sticks in their hands in the second room, and the Freedom Rider being questioned was surrounded by these men. Outside we could hear the questions, and the thumps and whacks, and sometimes a quick groan or a cry.… They beat several Riders who didn’t say “Yes, sir….” Rev. C. T. Vivian of Chattanooga was beaten pretty bad. When he came out he had blood streaming from his head…. We could hear somebody slap a girl Freedom Rider, and her quick little scream. … She was about five feet tall and wore glasses….
In the meantime, the newspapers were full of excited talk about the Freedom Rides. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, while seeking an injunction in federal court to prohibit Bull Connor and other policemen from interfering with interstate travel, issued a call for a “cooling-off period.” The reaction of moderate opinion in the country (for instance, the New York Times and the Charlotte Observer) was to support this. On the other hand, the very next day saw the arrival in Montgomery of Negro and white ministers headed by William Coffin, Yale University chaplain, all of whom were arrested trying to use the facilities of the bus terminal. Wyatt Walker of SCLC, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy from Montgomery, and the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth from Birmingham—were all arrested that day in Montgomery.
Charges flew back and forth. Governor Patterson of Alabama denounced the Riders and the Federal Government. Twenty-six white students from Auburn University, a state-supported college in Alabama, wrote in a letter
