SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Howard Boone's Zinn

before, a political drama was enacted on the longdistance wires between Washington, D.C. and Montgomery, Alabama. On Friday, President John Kennedy, concerned ever since the bus-burning and beatings of Mother’s Day, telephoned the Capitol Building at Montgomery to talk to Governor John Patterson. Patterson had said, just before the Anniston-Birmingham violence: “The people of Alabama are so enraged that I cannot guarantee protection for this bunch of rabble-rousers.” Patterson was not available to answer the phone and President Kennedy spoke to the Lieutenant-Governor.

      The President said, in this conversation, that it was the federal government’s responsibility to guarantee safe passage of people in interstate travel, and that he hoped Alabama could restore this right without the need for federal action. That same evening, a representative of the President, Justice Departmentman John Siegenthaler, flew to Montgomery to confer with Governor Patterson. Then he telephoned Attorney General Robert Kennedy in Washington, relaying Patterson’s assurance that he had “the will, the force, the men, and the equipment to fully protect everyone in Alabama.” Apparently, this promise of safe conduct led the Justice Department to arrange for a bus driver to leave the Birmingham terminal with the Freedom Riders. The F.B.I. notified the Montgomery police that the students were coming, was promised that precautionary steps would be taken, and told Washington that therefore no federal action was needed.

      Ruby Doris Smith tells of the students’ arrival in Montgomery:

      There were police cars all around the bus, and helicopters flying overhead. But when we got inside the Montgomery city limits, it all disappeared. It was around noon when we got to the terminal and got off the bus. Paul Brooks went to call cabs for us. People were meantime gathering nearby, and a CBS cameraman was taking pictures. Suddenly a large man with a cigar hit the cameraman. He kept dragging him all over the street, beating him. The cameraman was small. There was not one policeman around.

      About three hundred persons had gathered at the terminal, but apparently only about twenty-five or thirty participated in the actual violence that followed. These had clubs and sticks. Fifteen of them clubbed one newspaperman, Norman Ritter, head of the Time-Life News Bureau, when he tried to come to the help of another newsman.

      One of the first of the Riders to get off the bus was James Zwerg, a young white man from Appleton, Wisconsin, tall, slender, dressed neatly in an olive-green business suit. Several women screamed, “Kill the nigger-loving son of a bitch,” and a group of white youngsters moved in, pounded at Zwerg with fists and sticks, and sent him bleeding to the pavement. Then others stomped his face into the hot tar of the roadway, while women shouted encouragement.

      “Zwerg never attempted to defend himself in any way,” Ruby Doris Smith recalls. “He never put his hands up or anything. Every time they knocked him down, he got back up.” At just about that time, the cabs arrived for them.

      The mob turned from Zwerg to us. Someone yelled: “They’re about to get awayl” Then they started beating everyone. I saw John Lewis beaten, blood coming out of his mouth. People were running from all over. Every one of the fellows was hit. Some of them tried to take refuge in the post office, but they were turned out…. We saw some of the fellows on the ground, John Lewis lying there, blood streaming from his head….

      A few of the Riders escaped in the crowd. Others, trying to get through, were caught. Suitcases were torn from the students’ hands; clothing and mail were scattered over the street. (Later, onlookers gathered the clothing together, along with an English composition book that belonged to one of the students, and set the pile on fire.)

      One of the white girls was chased by the mob. John Siegenthaler, the President’s emissary to Montgomery, was on the scene, and as he tried to get the girl into his car, someone struck him from behind and knocked him unconscious. He lay on the street while people milled around. In the meantime the police had arrived. Siegenthaler still lay unconscious on the pavement. A newspaperman asked Police Commissioner L. B. Sullivan why an ambulance wasn’t called for Zwerg and for Siegenthaler. Sullivan replied: “Every white ambulance in town reports their vehicles have broken down.” After Siegenthaler lay there twenty-five minutes, police put him in a car and took him to a downtown hospital.

      Jim Zwerg got no medical attention for more than two hours. A Negro 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