U.S. Freedom Rides
Baseball bats and bicycle chains
The second bus headed for Birmingham where they were beated with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains. James Peck required more than fifty stitches in his head. The local police let the beatings continue, but when they were over they arrested the Freedom Riders.
The photograph shows members of the KKK beating a black bystander George Webb in the Birmingham Trailways bus station, May 14, 1961. The man with his back to the camera (center right) is FBI undercover agent Gary Thomas Rowe.
Public safey commissioner Bull Conner claimed that he posted no officers at the bus depot because of the holiday. It later emerged that the FBI knew of the planned attack and that the local police stayed away on purpose.
Alabama governor John Patterson offered no apologies, explaining, "When you go somewhere looking for trouble, you usually find it . . . . You just can't guarantee the safety of a fool and that's what these folks are, just fools."
The bus company, however, did not want to risk losing another bus to a bombing, and its drivers, who were all white, did not want to risk their lives.
In Australia four year later the driver of the Freedom Riders' bus resigned for similar reasons.
