WSB-TV (Television station : Atlanta, Ga.)

Description

In this WSB newsfilm clip from May 14, 1961, a Greyhound bus smolders, and injured Freedom Riders wait in the hospital and speak of a mob attack earlier in the day in Anniston, Alabama.The clip begins with the destroyed Greyhound bus, the company logo partially visible. The bus is extensively damaged by fire, and all of the windows are broken. Later in a hospital emergency room, African American Freedom Rider Mae Frances Moultrie (Howard), a twenty-four-year-old student at Morris College in South Carolina, sits in a wheelchair. Another woman, probably freelance writer and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) activist Charlotte Devree, wears a print dress and appears to speak to a reporter. Her comments are not recorded. The camera again focuses on Moultrie sitting in the wheelchair; also in the picture is an African American young man who sits on a bench near Moultrie. The young man may be Jimmy McDonald, a folksinger from New York City and one of the Freedom Riders. Next, Freedom Rider Bert Bigelow, a former Navy captain and anti-nuclear activist, holds a microphone and speaks to off-screen reporters. He indicates that during the attack he saw four or five mob members with clubs or pieces of pipe. He also reports that there were no police on hand during the attack. Bigelow credits a Greyhound company agent and the bus driver with keeping mob members off the bus, calling it "suicide" to have left the bus.The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized the 1961 Freedom Ride...

Record Contributed By

Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

Record Harvested From

Digital Library of Georgia