Moses J. Newson turns 90 on Feb. 5. The fearless AFRO reporter sent back news from some of the most dangerous places in America during the fight for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. This story recounts how the Freedom Riders, three of whom were White, were beaten in Montgomery, Ala. in 1961.
May 27, 1961
Friendship Airport never looked so good to me as it did Thursday afternoon when our jet pulled in from New Orleans.
After two weeks in the heat, hate and hell of Dixie with the Freedom Riders, getting back to Baltimore brought back the feeling of being an American citizen with some rights under the law.The colored citizen has no such rights in Dixie. Nor has the white man any rights, when he stands up for his colored brother.
It may be hard for a person unfamiliar with Deep South tradition – as were some of CORE’s 1961 Freedom Riders – to believe or understand the difference in what the law says a citizen can do and what a colored man can actually do in Dixie.
Southern State and local laws are rigged against the colored citizen and federal laws are simply disregarded.
Traveling with the Freedom Riders on their trip into the Deep South was a shocking and unforgettable experience.
It’s my personal feeling that Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy was a bit upset, too, when he found that his request for protection didn’t cut any ice down in Alabama and Mississippi.
Gov. John Paterson told the President’s brother we were too hot to protect and in so many words, get out of Alabama now.
There are some things you don’t believe.
Imagine, if you can, policemen from the city of Anniston, Ala. milling about chatting with members of a mob who are threatening the lives of bus passengers and breaking out windows and slashing tires.
This is what happened on Sunday, as has been reported in the press.
There remains no doubt in my mind these uninformed guardians of the peace would have allowed the mobsters to come aboard the bus and beat us to a pulp had not state investigators, Ell M. Cowley and Harry Sims, kept them back.
There seemed to be a thousand cars behind us leaving Anniston and the little white one ahead of us stopping the bus. No police intervened.
Then the tire went flat and we stopped.
I have no idea what Cpl. Cowling or Cpl. Sims feel about integration. But they are men who believe in the law and in fulfilling their duty.
As long as I live, I will never forget the showdown look on Cpl. Cowling’s face after he brought his luggage aboard and started strapping on his pistol while gazing out over the angry mob.
Alabama may not want to do it, but someone should pay tribute to these officers.
When I found myself trapped in that burning bus, set on fire by the mob, and the heat leaving me no choice but to go out the door and the smoke preventing my seeing where the mob stood, that cold, chilling realization that this might be it, came over me.
You make up your mind to take whatever is to be. I made one prayer, that my family would be all right, and one wish, that somehow, some miraculous way, I could step off that buss and have a machine gun in my hands.
Later, at Anniston Memorial Hospital, any doubts that law bows to racial hates and traditions were wiped from my mind.
“We’ll do the best we can in getting you to the city limits,” the Anniston officer kept saying, emphasizing the “best we can.” I remembered the best they did earlier in the day.
And there came the word of the Governor of the State of Alabama. The highway patrol was not available to offer us protection.
After all, you realize, you’re just colored folks and n—-r loving Yankees. No matter what United States law says as one proud mobster explained, “This is Alabama and we’re gonna keep it white.”
The biggest letdown in the whole trip came at the Birmingham Airport. Try to imagine two full days of tension – and yes, fear for your life – and then the good, good feeling aboard a plane that will fly you away from the terrorizing human stalkers.
Deep down in your heart you’re happy.
And like a nightmare comes the voice to say there has been a bomb threat and everyone must get off and return to the airport. It was pure torture.
But there are things you remember with pleasure from the trip.
Like the night Henry Thomas, a 19-year-old kid was arrested in Winnsboro, S.C. and after a stay at the jail, was returned to the bus terminal by a policeman. There was a small unfriendly greeting party.
So what does this kid with the iron nerve do? That’s right, he strode straight into the sacred white waiting room in which he had been arrested earlier.
He later explained; “There was a great deal of pride in it. When I got out of that car everybody was watching to see which way I would go.”
As a friend of colored people, Mrs. Frances Bergman, 57, white, found the city so hostile she later declared:
“For the first time, I felt that I had a glimpse of what it would be like to be colored… to be scorned, humiliated and made to feel like dirt…”
On this dangerous trip through the Deep South with the courageous – every single one of them – Freedom Riders, there was opportunity to have a good look at colored and white.
The thing about the “new colored man” is true. They want every right accorded any American and they want it now – and they are ready to fight and die for it.
An example is the men who drove the 10 cars sent by Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth from Birmingham to Anniston to rescue us. They knew the danger. They knew the need. So they came.
But the Deep South is not ready to accept gracefully the laws of the land. That was painfully clear in the leering faces and the policemen who looked the other way.
I am convinced the Freedom Ride pinpointed the urgency of the nation enforcing laws in all 50 states.
With hopes that I’m wrong, I am convinced nothing will be done soon to make the South give the colored citizen equal protection under the law.
And again, even here in Baltimore, I am frightened.
