'Private' Violence

One charged with the duty of keeping the peace cannot be an innocent bystander where the constitutionally protected rights ofpersons are being invaded. He must stand on the side of law andorder or be counted among the mob. 1

These words, written by a Federal Circuit Judge almost 10 years ago,

constitute a lucid statement of the major premise underlying this sectionof the Commission's study. The problem involved is a limited one.For only those acts of private racial violence which involved "denials ofequal protection of the laws" are within the Commission's jurisdiction. 2

Accordingly, the Commission is concerned exclusively with "private"

violence that has some direct or indirect governmental sanction2014as whenpolicemen intentionally fail to protect a person from mob attack; 3 whenthey fail to take proper steps to protect prisoners in their custody from private violence; 4 or when they connive in private misconduct by failure toarrest its perpetrators. 6 And since all such recent cases that have come tothe Commission's attention involve Negroes, this chapter is concernedwith governmentally sanctioned private violence directed against them.

It is difficult to determine the extent of denials of equal protectioninvolving police derelictions. But the Commission is of the opinionthat, in contrast to police brutality, police complicity in private violencehas declined sharply in recent years. More police officers than everbefore apparently are doing everything in their power to prevent racialviolence, and when it occurs, to arrest the assailants. 6 But the recentfate of the "Freedom Riders" in Alabama shows that the problem isstill with us.

ALABAMA: 1961

The violence in Alabama was prompted by the appearance of two smallgroups of white and Negro bus passengers, styling themselves "FreedomRiders." Sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality, the trip's an-29

nounced purpose was to challenge racial segregation in interstate bustravel. Leaving Washington on May 4, 1961, as a single unit, the grouprode through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia with no major difficulties. In Atlanta, it split into two sections for the Alabama leg of thetrip. One section boarded a Greyhound bus, the other a Trailways bus,and on May 14, both departed Atlanta for Birmingham. As the groupsleft, the United States Department of Justice alerted Birmingham policeto information of planned violence against the "Freedom Riders" whenthey reached that city. 7

Indeed, the fact that violence might occur was well known, but the

police of Birmingham did not take steps to prevent it. C.B.S. Newscorrespondent Howard K. Smith, who was in Birmingham, receiveda telephone call from one Edward Fields on Saturday, May 13, andwas told that when the "Freedom Riders" came to Birmingham, "theKlan would be out in force and I would see action." 8

Smith went to the Greyhound bus terminal in Birmingham the next

day and waited for 4 hours with a crowd of other reporters and photographers. All of them expected trouble. A local reporter identifiedsport-shirted men gathered there as "Klansmen minus their robes." Police Commissioner Eugene Connor reportedly was in his office duringmuch of this time. When the Trailways bus came in at another terminalseveral blocks away, the expected violence took place. After 10 or 15minutes, the Klansmen jumped into waiting cars and left. Smith statedthat, "The police, though nearby, had disappeared from the streets. Aminute or so after the hoodlums had dispersed, as if on agreed signal,the police suddenly appeared. But no marauders were around, andno arrests were then made." 9

On the day after the "Freedom Riders" were beaten the Birmingham

News wrote that, "the City of Birmingham is normally a peaceful,orderly place in which people are safe." 10 The report then continued,"Harrison Salisbury of The New York Times last year came to Birmingham and wrote two articles about us which said, in substance, that 'fearand hatred' stalked our streets." The News, which previously had deniedthis charge, wrote: "But yesterday, Sunday, May 14, was a day whichought to be burned into Birmingham's conscience. Fear and hatreddid stalk Birmingham's streets yesterday." n

As for the Police Commissioner and Birmingham's policemen, the

prosegregationist News wrote: 12

This newspaper supported Eugene Connor for police commissioner . . . # * #

The Birmingham Police Department under Mr. Connor did not dowhat could have been done Sunday.

* #

30

The people2014and their police2014permitted . . . fear and hate toride our streets. # * *

Today many are asking "Where were the police?"

Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene Connor made a statementon the same day: 13

I regret very much this incident had to happen in Birmingham.

I have said for the last 20 years that these out-of-town meddlers weregoing to cause bloodshed if they kept meddling in the South'sbusiness. * * *

It happened on a Sunday, Mother's Day, when we try to let off asmany of our policemen as possible so they can spend Mother's Dayat home with their families.

We got the police to the bus station as quick as we possibly could.

Before the Trailways bus reached Birmingham and violence, a mob ofwhite men and women met the Greyhound bus 60 miles away in Anniston. Police at the scene did not stop the crowd from smashing windows and slashing tires. 14 The bus stopped on the road 6 miles outsideof Anniston when its tires went flat. It was quickly surrounded by themob which followed from the town. An incendiary device was thrownthrough a window and set the bus afire. The passengers managed toget off the bus. None were killed, but 12 were admitted to the hospitalbecause of smoke inhalation. One State highway patrol investigatorwho was on the bus prevented further violence.

On Wednesday, May 17, Governor Patterson declared, "We can't actas nursemaids to agitators. They'll stay home when they learn nobodyis there to protect them." 15 The Montgomery Advertiser commented: 16

In short, the Governor of Alabama has told the cockeyed world

that Alabama on occasion is to be converted into a lawless arenathat might even include murder on the card.

On May 20 another group of "Freedom Riders" was attacked andbrutally mauled by a mob of white men and women, this time in Montgomery, the State capital. One of those attacked and knocked unconscious was John Siegenthaler, Administrative Assistant to AttorneyGeneral Robert Kennedy and President Kennedy's personal representative in this situation. Siegenthaler had driven near the scene in aprivate car. It was reported to the Commission that as Mr. Siegenthalerwas lying unconscious in the middle of the street several white menkicked him and one yelled, "We got us an FBI man." 17 The police re-Si

action to the violence is summed up in this excerpt from an order subsequently issued by Frank M. Johnson, Jr., a Federal District Judge inAlabama: 18

This Court . . . finds that on May 20, 1961, it was a matter of

public knowledge in Montgomery, Alabama, and was known to theMontgomery Police Department in Montgomery, Alabama, that aGreyhound bus carrying a group of white and Negro collegestudents . . . was en route from Birmingham to Montgomery. . . .

This Court further finds that a Montgomery Police Departmentofficer, Detective Shows, stated to a reporter for the MontgomeryAdvertiser on the morning of May 20 that the Montgomery police"would not lift a finger to protect" this group.

This finding of fact was included in an order issued on June 2, 1961,which also stated that the Ku Klux Klan had actually carried out theviolence. Both the Klan and the Montgomery Police Department2014aswell as the "Freedom Riders"2014were temporarily restrained from interfering with travel in interstate commerce. In addition, the judge madethis statement: "The failure of the defendant law enforcement officersto enforce the law in this case clearly amounts to unlawful state actionin violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the FourteenthAmendment." 19

Although the Federal judge found that the Montgomery police had

been adequately warned, Commissioner L. B. Sullivan stated shortlyafter the violence that his officers had been caught off guard. The Commissioner reportedly explained that this happened "because we didn'thave definite information that they were coming here." He added,"Providing police protection for agitators is not our policy but we wouldhave been ready if we had had definite and positive information theywere coming." 20

Following the outbreak on...