On This Day In Alabama History: Freedom Riders Arrived In Anniston

Alabama News Center | May 14, 2017 @ 5:00 am

By Graydon Rust
Alabama 200

May 14, 1961

A Greyhound bus carrying the racially integrated Freedom Riders arrived in Anniston. Testing the enforcement of a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the segregation of interstate buses, the riders were met by an angry mob at the terminal. The mob, including local Klansmen, attacked the bus with clubs, slashed its tires as it attempted to flee, and firebombed it miles down the road. As the passengers barely managed to escape the flames, the mob mercilessly attacked them until authorities arrived. A second bus, a Trailways, arrived at the terminal an hour later and its passengers were also viciously beaten. On May 17, a new set of riders set out from Nashville to continue the journey.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.

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