Seigenthaler offered to assist two women who were being beaten, he was
sucker-punched from behind with an iron bar and lay unconscious until
Floyd Mann and his troopers arrived. Mann fired his gun into the air and
yelled, ‘There’ll be no killing here today.’ When a white attacker raised his bat
against 19-year-old Nashville seminarian William Barbee, Mann put his gun
to the attacker’s head. ‘One more swing,’ he shouted, ‘and you’re dead.’
Barbee lived, but was paralyzed.
The next day, a large rally was held in Ralph Abernathy’s Montgomery
church. As the rally began, angry whites waving Confederate flags sur-
rounded the church and tossed stones, bottles, and Molotovcocktails at it.
The ministers pleaded for calm, but some men pulled out knives and guns
to defend their families. Martin Luther King angrily called Robert Kennedy
for help, and the attorney general dispatched 400 US marshals to disperse
the mob with tear gas. It was the first federal show of force to protect blacks
since the Little Rock crisis. Unfortunately, the chemical wafted inside the
church. Just as it looked as if the trapped crowd would capitulate, governor
Patterson surprisingly declared martial law and sent in the police and
Alabama National Guard.
The president hoped that this latest disturbance would persuade the
riders to accept a cooling-off period. He did not want any domestic embar-
rassments before his upcoming summit meeting with Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev in Vienna. Kennedy had been humiliated a month earlier in the
Bay of Pigs fiasco, leading Robert Kennedy to pressure Farmer to stop the
Ride. An insulted Farmer replied heatedly that ‘We have been cooling off for
350 years. If we cool off any more, we will be in a deep freeze. The Freedom
Ride will go on!’
New riders arrived from southern cities, and the Ride resumed days after
the mob attacked Abernathy’s church. Despite several entreaties, Martin
Luther King did not become a rider. He explained that, if he survived, the
ride would violate his probation in Georgia and send him to prison for six
months. Moreover, he wanted to pick the time of his own Golgotha, a refer-
ence to Jesus’ crucifixion. The student riders derided King for his lame
excuse, pointing out that they were on probation too. ‘De Lawd!’ they called
King for comparing himself to Christ. The Ride’s instigator, James Farmer,
was likewise petrified by the trip’s obvious peril and intended to stay behind.
He went to the bus station and shook hands with the riders, telling 17-year-
old Doris Castle to ‘have a safe journey.’ Dumbfounded, Castle implored him
to rejoin the Ride. Farmer regretted his cowardice and climbed on board.
As the buses sped toward Mississippi, which Farmer called ‘bigotry’s main
den,’ the riders received protection from planes and helicopters, as well as
National Guardsmen and dozens of police cars. Before long, the buses passed
by two ominous billboards at the state line: ‘WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI68 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Molotov Cocktail: A
homemade bomb used
by the KKK against black
activists.