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FREEDOM RIDERS The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) staged Freedom Rides in the spring of 1961. CORE volunteers, black and white, boarded intercity highway buses. They rode from city to city in the South, testing the extent to which buses and bus stations were racially integrated. One Greyhound bus, bound from Atlanta, Ga., to Birmingham, Al., was stopped by a mob and fire-bombed near Anniston, Al. Photo: Sign, Greyhound Bus Station, Birmingham, Al. |
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This is the 2002 version of the bus that
was fire-bombed in Anniston, Al., in 1961.
The bus in the Anniston incident filled with flames and smoke, but all the Freedom Riders successfully escaped. |
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This is the Greyhound Bus Station in
Birmingham, Al., in 2002.
In 1961 a group of Freedom Riders arrived on a Greyhound bus. As they left the bus, the Freedom Riders were severely beaten by a white mob of segregationists. |
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The Greyhound Bus Station is across the street from the Birmingham City Hall (the high rise building behind the bus station). Birmingham police, however, made no effort to protect the Freedom Riders. |