By JIM GENARO

SWANNANOA ó A newly uncovered set of photographs donated to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute chronicles the brutality of the attacks suffered by the 1961 Freedom Riders as they traveled into the deep South to test the enforcement of desegregation.

Laura Anderson, assistant archivist for the institute, presented digital images of the photos and discussed their historical context in a talk Oct. 30 at Warren Wilson Collegeís Canon Lounge. About a dozen people attended the talk.

The 64 photos, which chronicle the attacks on a Greyhound bus in Anniston, Ala., were donated to the BCRI by a law firm that had been involved in defending some of the attackers, Anderson said.The identity of the photographer is not certain.

The Freedom Riders were a group of civil rights activists who set out on buses from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans to test whether the southern states were enforcing the 1960 Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia, which had overturned the conviction of an African-American law student for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal that was ìwhites only.î

The activists, who were racially mixed, set out on two buses to see whether the black riders would be allowed to sit next to white riders in bus terminals and restaurants.

ìThey made it as far as Atlanta without too much violence,î Anderson said.

However, this relative peace was shattered when the first bus arrived in Anniston and was attacked by a mob of angry segregationists.

ìThe idea was, they would go in pairs into the bus station,î she noted. Pairs of activists, one black and one white, would go enter the station and try to sit down together.

ìIt didnít take them long to realize they couldnít stick to the plan,î Anderson said.

The bus was quickly surrounded when it arrived at the station, as the attackers started throwing rocks and bricks at the vehicleís windows.

Anderson noted that not all the pasengers on the bus were part of the Freedom Ride. In addition to several riders who were simply trying to get somewhere on the bus, two undercover officers from the Alabama State Patrol were riding with the activists.

One of the photographs shows a car that the attackers had pulled in front of the bus to block the line of sight up to the bus.

The assault lasted about 25 minutes before police arrived and allowed the bus to leave.

Noting the irony of the Greyhound motto emblazoned on the side of the badly damaged bus, Anderson said, ìI love the slogan: ëItís such a comfort to ride the bus.íî

The bus continued on its journey, but did not make it far, she said.

The mob had ìdone enoough damage at the station to know they were going to have to stop and pull over,î she told the audience.

The bus, whose tires had been slashed in the attack, got just outside of the town before it had to stop at a gas station. That was when they realized that the mob had followed them.

ìThe Freedom Riders definitely know whatís going on this time, and theyíre terrified. They know whatís about to happen,î she said.

One of the undercover officers prevented the attackers from getting onto the bus. However, he did not prevent them from throwing a firebomb into one of the vehicleís broken windows.

Anderosn said that one of the freedom riders who had been on the bus that day told her that he realized, ìwe could either die from a beating or die from a fire. I donít think thereís anything a human being can do ... theyíre going to drop to the floor and crawl out the door.î

Though the undercover officers initially barred the riders from escaping, they eventually let them out. However, when they got out of the bus, the riders were brutally beaten by the mob, Anderson said.

What saved them was a sudden popping sound coming from the bus.

ìThe mob thought the bus was about to explode and they all ran back to their cars,î she said.

When the attackers realized the bus wasnít going to blow up, they started to come back toward it, but by that time a Highway Patrol officer had arrived and fired his gun near them to keep them from renewing their attacks.

An audience member expressed skepticism that the officer ìjust happened to show upî right then.
ìThe governor and everybody else knew what this was going to be about and they timed it the way they wanted to time it,î Anderson replied.

The owners of the nearby gas station refused to allow the wounded riders to come in and get water. However, his 12-year-old daughter, Jamie Forsythe, brought them buckets of water.

Anderson noted that Forsythe was ìso ostracized by the communityî in Anniston after this that she left the town and severed all ties as an adult.

Meanwhile, the white hospital refused to send an ambulance to get the black riders. At that time, Anderson noted, hospitals in the segregated South would only pick up white people, while blacks had to rely on funeral home cars to get to hospitals.

Eventually, one of the undercover officers negotiated with the hospital to get ambulences sent and the riders were treated briefly. However, the hospitalís board of directors soon decided to expel them out of fear of bomb threats.

The impact of the attack had a huge effect on national politics, Anderson said. ìThis is one of those seminal events in terms of national and international media coverage.î

Photos of the Anniston attack, and of a subsequent attack on the second bus in Birmingham, made the front pages of newspapers across the country, intensifying the national debate over racially motivated violence.
Eventually, the organizers of the feedom rides decided to discontinue the rides, Anderson said.

Three or four of the attackers were eventually charged, and, in what Anderson termed ìa joke of a trial, an all-white, all-ale jury said they werenít guilty.î

A man in the audience asked Anderson how she felt as an archivist being presented with these extremely rare photographs.

She replied that she first felt a tremendous ìresponsibility to get them out there.î

ìI cannot abide repositories keeping these thingsî locked away, she added.

However, she acknowledged that there are complications in distributing them, as the BCRI does not own the copyright to the photos.

Nonetheless, she said, she has given copies of the images to several documentarians who wanted to use them for non-profit purposes.

ìIíd rather be sued for doing something that was right than not have the images out there,î Anderson told the audience.