(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This is the United States.

A nation seeking its own independent path to progress, but stalled in its forward march by a subversive force that grows more malignant with each passing day.

- [Announcer] This is a temporary grave of three civil rights workers.

Two white, one negro.

Beaten and shot to death.

Among those indicted for this triple slaying were six men identified as members of the KU Klux Klan.

None has been brought to trial.

- Did you know your horse won't mix with your cow?

Your dog won't mix with your hound, and you tell me white people have gotta find and take (indistinct).

- I read in my history books, there's another man, the negro race was an inferior race.

And that was the history that was taught to me when I was in school.

- What we are asking for is humanity.

We are as asking to be allowed to live like human beings and God you tell us that this is too much to ask.

- [Narrator] And the burning cross, the Klan trademark, became a symbol of the violence they used to keep the newly freed Negroes in their place.

- [Announcer] We are here on Highway 202 and this bus is on fire.

I think the bus has been completely ensued in flames and there're people still on board.

(intense music) (upbeat music) - I grew up in Choccolocco Alabama.

Which is about 10 miles across a mountain in the valley.

And Anniston was the County seat and Anniston was the city where you came to do your shopping.

- Blacks had to go around to the back door and you was the last one hired and the first one fired.

And quite different to what it is now.

Everything was badly segregated then.

I had worked for people and couldn't even come in and out the front door.

- And on the streets of Anniston, that Noble Street is the Main Street.

There was stores like Kress's.

Stores like Woolworths.

Stores like Silvers.

And those stores you could go in, but if you wanted a drink of water, you couldn't get it.

- You know as a child, I was six years old in 1961.

It was an idyllic place really.

Most of the children, I gotta tell you this was a place, after that all the way up through my teens I guess, I just felt like this was just an oasis.

I knew the rest of Alabama had all kinds of problems, we didn't seem to see them.

I thought, "Well, this is a kind of a really unusual place that way."

More people need to figure out what this is about.

I guess that speaks well for our parents that they were doing what they could.

Especially at a very young age to shield us from all this, so we wouldn't worry about it too much.

- When Spring came I would organize my class.

We would go through Kress's in a straight line.

At the back was a white water fountain and a colored water fountain.

We drank from the white water fountain, as opposed to the colored water fountain.

Meaning that colored water at home represented Kool-Aid for us and we wanted water which is clear - Where I went to school was the Episcopal School in West Anniston.

There weren't any black kids in the school, but we were surrounded by black families.

Even when we'd go to the movies, you know, the Ritz Theater, the Calhoun Theater down on Noble Street.

You know, we all went in the same door, I think.

But, there were no black people downstairs.

And I didn't notice that for long, because it's dark in there and everything.

I just didn't notice who was really there.

And I realized later that they were all up in the balcony.

- I was accustomed to segregation.

There was no young black person my age on my street.

But, I could cross the alley and there was a young white gentlemen my age.

He didn't have anybody to play with.

Neither did I.

And so we became friends.

One day he went to the downtown theater and he's describing what he saw out front with the lights flickering and go inside the smell of the popcorn and the hot dogs and on into the theater with the plush seats.

He comes back, runs over to the house and he described all of this to me, "Ask your mom to take you to the theater."

And the theater entrance is to my right.

So I'm excited because my friend had said something to me about that.

And I'm going to the right, not paying attention what's at the left.

She takes me by my left wrist and says, "We can't go in that way."

We have to go down this dark alley, pay for the tickets, go upstairs and sit in the balcony.

Where you can't sit in the plush seats.

You can't smell the popcorn, the hot dogs and what have you.

I never forgot that.

- The community that I grew up in, my neighbors on the right was white, on the back was white.

Back of me was white.

You were together, but at night time you knew you go to your house I go to mine.

On Sunday, you went to your church, I go to my church.

Any social activities, with yours.

But there was a little more friendship between the two in the County than it was in the City, you know.

- When you grow up with something and that's, that's what you're brought up in, you don't know any different.

You know that's just the way that everybody read.

Nobody's complaining about anything.

So that's just the way everything was.

When I was about 12 or 13, I started noticing differences.

I became more aware I guess, that something was not quite right.

I mean, it just.

It was forced separation, it felt like it wasn't natural.

Didn't feel it was supposed to be that way.

And I would go to other places.

You know our family would go to different towns and things and I would notice it wasn't like that at all.

And looking back at it of course, it's very difficult to believe that that's, that's what was the norm.

- The town I was growing up, it was on the outskirts of Oxford.

We had a Mumford address.

It was more rural.

I remember seeing separate water fountains.

My first thought when I was a kid that that same sort of (indistinct) was a waste of space and water.

I had no idea of what the purpose was behind that.

Of course there wasn't really ever any legitimate purpose behind it to start with.

(melancholic instrumental music) I think integrating the schools and having people play football together and against each other.

Having people participate in choir together, having all the things that are offered, or were offered at the time when I was in school, and you stop noticing it.

I think that helped things and certainly proved that separate but equal was just not the way.

There's no such thing as separate but equal.

- Let's imagine ourselves listening to a parade and how does the parade sound when it's far away from us?

- Okay, but let me tell you about the school systems.

The school systems were segregated.

We had all the elementary schools, I think we had about six elementary schools.

But blacks went to that school, whites went to that school until the 60s.

And then they started integrating teachers, before they integrated students.

And teachers were handpicked.

I was one of those teachers who was sent to an all white school and the only black person in the school.

When we brought the white teachers in to teach the black children, our children missed out.

What they knew about us was not true.

They knew negative things.

The only thing new in this world, is the history that you don't know.

And I can see a change in what's happening right now.

We're feeling the effects of it right now.

- We were all white children that were in the first grade, except for two kids in the class.

When integration occurred, there was this odd thing that started happening.

I mean he ended up, having to fight everybody in that class every day.

He was a nice kid.

I look back now and I'm thinking, "Man, I could have been friends with this kid."

But I couldn't have, because of the circumstances that were surrounding it.

And I remember him getting hit and I remember the contrast of the bright red blood on his lip against his skin.

And from that point forward I'm like, "This is just wrong.

And I can't have any part in this."

I remember in the City of Anniston, looking back at the history of the City of Anniston.

Is there were leaders in the City of Anniston that were attempting to integrate.

If you don't go along and get along with the agenda of segregation, what would happen is that, say you operated a business you would get branded as "nigga lover."

And once that got stuck to you, you're not going to profit in your business anymore.

Because they're not going to shop at your store.

They're going to shun you from the community.

They're gonna look funny at you when you walk into the church.

When you're in first grade, you're gonna get beaten just like the kid that is getting beaten for no reason other than the color of his skin.

(melancholic instrumental music) - I grew up on a cotton farm and when I was drafted in the military, came home on my furlough and with a naval uniform on, standing up looking at vacant seats on the bus.

And I said, "If I ever get a chance I'll do something about this."

I cried because, I didn't feel that I was less than human, I was good enough to fight, but was still was not recognized in some instances.

- Well, I grew up in the segregated South in Atlanta.

But Atlanta was unique from a lot of cities because you didn't have to interact with white society, because we had everything in our neighborhoods that you had in the larger community.

We had bowling alleys, we had churches, we had nightclubs, restaurants.

So, basically we just lived a separate life from the rest of the city.

However, during the holidays, Christmas and Easter and 4th of July, where you had to go to the major department stores to get stuff, that's when we became involved with the rest of the city.

(intense music) When you go into a store, make sure that you get a bag, make sure you get a receipt.

Say, "Yes sir.

No, sir."

"Yes ma'am.

No, ma'am."

Don't put your hands in your pockets, it looked anything suspicious, anybody would think that, and gave people the impression that you might be stealing something.

But the thing is, you were always scrutinized from the time you entered the store until the time you left.

Because they suspected everybody as being thieves, you know.

One night we were coming from visiting our relatives and we encountered a caravan of KKK.

One of the cars had a cross on the front, it was light.

We didn't know what to expect but my dad did.

But I could tell that he was upset and he was afraid.

So he found a black community and we more or less sat there for about 30 minutes until the Klan had passed by.

My dad was silent the rest of the way home and he never really said anything about it, but we knew that it was the KKK.

And we didn't know who they were after that particular night.

But we knew that we had to get off the highway.

- My father grew up in Birmingham, during the time of civil unrest.

Well, he and my mother purchased land in a part of Calhoun County that wasn't quite integrated, and their property and the beginnings of their home were burned by the KKK.

So I contacted my father and asked him you know, "What happened that that didn't change something for you?"

Because that's traumatic.

He said, "My brain went back to its original teachings of love and understanding and compassion."

And he said, "And I knew that that anger would probably eat me from the inside out."

- In a small community, you too often find that the Sheriff is a member or that the Deputy is a member.

And the poor white man or more particularly, the poor negro in a small community, he well knows that detection at all, or the law isn't going to help him, because the law is more often than not in the Klan or sympathetic with it in the small Southern community.

(intense music) - I had escaped from the Klan in Winnsboro, South Carolina.

Police arrested me going into the white men's restroom.

Took me to jail and then later on that night without telling me anything about why I was arrested, took me to the bus station that was closed.

And there was perhaps 15 to 20 men, white men at the bus station.

The officer in the back of the police car with me, put his hand on his gun and he told me to get out of the car or he was gonna blow my brains out.

- I was used to fighting back.

If somebody hit me, I try to hit them first or hit back.

But Dr. King had a different approach and pretty soon I found out that his approach was much better.

- In October of 1960, is when we started our training.

When Jim Lawson started the non-violent training, of not only black students, but white students, Jewish students, you name them.

(upbeat music) The opposition was just, as we said, the hoodlums.

They wouldn't give up.

They didn't want us to desegregate.

In the training that we had, we were willing to do what needed to be done.

- Well, not all was worse for several reasons.

But the main reason is when you use violence it escalates and that may justify the person who's attacking you to use force.

But what happens when you're non-violent, and you can take their best shot and you don't go down, it's frustrating for them, because you know, you've taken their best shot and they couldn't take you out.

- When we would be assigned to a store, we would have probably 24 people assigned to that store.

Now, if you're sitting, if you're one of those are sitting at the stool, let's say there are six stools.

there would be seven people in that store per group.

Six of them are sitting down, one is standing with the police.

So if the news media wanted to walk up to me and I'm sitting on a stool, I would ignore them because I'm not the spokesperson for that group.

I would continue looking forward.

I've already placed my order, knowing that I would not be served.

So that seventh person is the one that would talk to the media or bring something to the attention of the police that's standing there with him.

And so again, I knew that there was a possible chance that something would happen to me as an individual.

But I wasn't afraid.

I wasn't afraid.

People talking about, "Well, what can you do this summer?"

"Well, we can flip burgers or we can go on a freedom ride."

And they chose to go on the freedom ride.

- [Announcer] Over 300 freedom writers went to jail.

Nearly half of those were white.

Nearly half were women.

- Now we have filled the city and the county jail.

And so the Governor and the Attorney General said, "Hey, they're still coming.

We gotta put them somewhere."

And that's when they moved us to Parkman Penitentiary.

- Most people would kill you if you put a Jersey bull among their white face, Hartford.

They'd shoot you.

But they're telling me that I don't even have a right to fight to protect the white race.

Let these black bucks come in.

- [Rip] We are willing to sit at a lunch counter, have you to beat on us and do whatever you wanted to do.

(melancholic instrumental music) - How ironic and hypocritical was it to condemn a group of people for certain actions that they actually had not committed.

But for you to be acting out these acts of violence and anger.

(melancholic instrumental music) People just wanted to be treated as human beings and that's the bottom line.

Treat us as you will be treated, we're not here to cause any problems, we're not here to fight.

We just want to live in peace and be happy just like every other human being.

- In May of 1961, a group of interracial Freedom Riders set forth on a mission from Washington DC to New Orleans to basically test the ruling of Boynton vs Virginia that prohibited discrimination and segregation in public transportation facilities.

- [Announcer] These were organized by the Congress of Racial Equality.

Whose members both Negro and white, determined to challenge the practice of providing separate facilities for Negro and White travelers in the South.

The Freedom Riders tried to use whites-only restrooms, whites-only bus stations, and whites-only restaurants in an effort to segregation laws in the segregated South at the time.

People were just not at all interested in in changing the status quo, so long as it didn't affect their lives.

But the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the civil rights movement as a whole really helped to shed light on just how inhumane these individuals and these human beings were being treated.

Something had to be done.

(upbeat music) - My name is Hank Thomas.

I'm one of the original 13 Freedom Riders.

(intense music) As we drove into the City of Anniston, there was no one on the streets.

The police, Governor Patterson had told everyone to be off the streets in Downtown Anniston and let the police handle everything.

Well, I had already seen an example of what the police would do when they would handle everything.

As we drove into the area where the bus station was and turned the corner, saw the bus station and a crowd of maybe 30 men were standing there yelling and screaming.

Sticks, lead pipes, and bicycle chains.

(intense music) And they started cheering.

As the bus driver pulled into the area where the bus usually come to discharge it's passengers, the whole men crowded around the bus.

The bus driver has some trouble opening the door.

He finally got the door open.

He said, fellows, "I'm just a bus driver.

My job was just to bring them.

That's all I was ever to do."

He said that because I think he feared for his safety as well.

Well, when he got off the bus and went inside, my seatmate was Ed (indistinct), and it was his job and mine to go into the bus to see if they were integrated or they were segregated.

So Ed said to me, "Let's go."

I said, "Ed, I don't think we need to go inside to figure out that this place is segregated."

He said, "No, but we gotta be sure."

I said, "Ed I am sure."

But the bus driver did us all a favor.

Before he got off the bus, he locked the door from the inside so that people on the outside could not get on to the bus.

They then proceeded to rock the bus and to break out the windows.

It was only gonna be a matter of time before they will be able to get on the bus.

Governor Patterson, all during that day was making public service announcement stating that outside agitators, communists, and race mixers would not be protected.

All that did was just to spur the crowd on.

Unbeknownst to us at the time, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was apprised at what was going on.

Somehow or another, the Attorney General did get ahold of Governor Patterson and they got a hold of the Greyhound Bus Company.

And they found a driver who would drive the bus away from Anniston on into Birmingham.

The new driver came aboard and he tried to drive the bus away.

These people on the outside were sitting down in front of the bus and surrounding the bus.

So when the driver got the bus started, he could only move at a certain speed.

We pulled away from that, it was somewhat of a sigh of relief.

But in front of the bus was two, three pickup trucks.

The bus could only travel at a speed of about maybe 10 to 15 miles per hour.

Behind the bus was a trail of cars and pickups.

None of us knew what was gonna happen.

A few miles outside of Anniston, the tires of the bus went flat.

They had been cut.

Incidentally, the bus stopped in front of a country store.

About 25 maybe 30 people had gathered there at the country store.

A lot of these people had just gotten out of church and they brought their children with them, to see the Freedom Riders either getting beaten up or killed.

(intense music) - They started rocking the bus and eventually somebody used a crowbar to break the very back window out of the bus.

- The Klan members set the bus afire, with some kind of incendiary device.

Smoke filled the bus.

If I got off the bus, I was gonna be beaten to death by the crowd.

If I stayed on the bus, I would be burned and killed by the smoke.

I thought if I was killed by the smoke, that was the least painful way to die.

(intense music) And then, the involuntary muscles in your body took over.

I had to get some air.

We all had to get air.

Got up off the floor and I ran toward the front door.

When I got to the front of the bus.

two men outside were holding the door.

And I heard one of them say, "Let's burn them alive."

(sombre music) Within another minute or so, fire got to the fuel tank and the fuel tank blew up and blew out the back of the bus.

Everybody outside ran.

And that was the way we were able to get off the bus.

Smoke everywhere.

Not only do you just get off the bus, but you gotta get away from the bus in order to get fresh air.

I remember as I was coming away from the flames of smoke a man asked me, "Boy, are you all right?"

I just nodded my head thinking here's somebody who's concerned.

But when I did that, he hit me with a baseball bat, knocked me down.

And probably I was unconscious for a matter of seconds.

I came to, and there's a police officer, Highway Patrolman standing there.

And there were two men who saw that I was getting up and they came toward me.

And I looked at the Patrolman.

He wasn't gonna do anything.

So I did something that could have gotten me killed.

I used him as a shield.

I thought he was gonna shoot me.

So instinctively I had covered my face.

But then he said, "All right, y'all have had your fun, get back."

In the meantime we all had smoke in our lungs.

We needed water, we needed air.

(melancholic instrumental music) - My father used to talk to his family about politics and race and whatever at the breakfast table.

Maybe Wednesday or Thursday he said that, there were some outside agitators who were supposed to come to town and that they were going to cause trouble and try to take our way of life away from us.

The following Sunday, it was Mother's Day.

May 14th, 1961.

And there was a bus that was pulled over and people all around it and people all over our yard.

And they were yelling at the people on the bus and so I went to find out what was going on.

I went straight to it and stood in front of my dad's store and just watched while, while events unfolded.

So what I saw while I stood there was an arm that went up over the crowd and he had a crowbar or a chain or something in his hand and he broke the back window.

A few minutes that same arm went back up and he threw some kind of device into the hole in the window.

And it turned out it was a firebomb and then the bus caught on fire after that.

Then the bus exploded, something went off and the people had to get off the bus or die in there.

And they pushed their way out into our yard and I could hear them yelling for water.

I sprang into action.

I went back down to the house and filled up a bucket full of water and started carrying it through the crowd.

People were beating up the men who came off the bus.

But I started carrying water through that crowd and it was like walking into a war zone or something, but I just kept my head down and kept going.

I would hear somebody ask for water and I would go to him, give him some water.

And when they seemed to be okay I would pick out somebody else and go to them.

Hank remembers the little girl standing next to him and said he knew there was somebody standing next to him, but that she was short and probably white and he didn't know what to think of it.

And he turned around to see what it was, it was this glass of water under his nose and "Take it, it's water."

- [Hank] The adults who had just left church, stood around scowling at her.

"Imagine Lou Janey giving these communists water."

- If I had been hobbled by fear, I wouldn't have been able to do anything.

I just kept carrying the water and doing what one foot in front of the other until I felt like it was safe and okay for me to quit, and nobody else needed, needed to have the water.

- And it turns out there was another State Patrolman, but he drove up in a State Patrol car, jumped out and fired a shot in the air.

And that kind of melted everybody.

Then he was like, "Back up or this is gonna be the last thing you do.

Everybody calm down."

- [Janie] The Freedom Riders were taken by cars, somewhere, I didn't know where.

And that was the end of that day for me.

- It was against the law, for a white ambulance driver to take black people to get medical attention.

So they could not take the black Freedom Riders.

The White Freedom Rider's said, "If you can't take them, then you don't take us."

Telephone calls up to Washington finally solved the problem.

And Governor Patterson agreed to let that white ambulance driver take us to the hospital.

- Remember this was before the march on Washington, this was before the 16th Street Bombing.

It was before Bloody Sunday.

It was before the Summit of Montgomery March.

This was early, this was 1961.

And not only was it an early act of the Civil Rights Movement, but it paralleled with the development of broadcast media.

- My dad was Tom Potts Senior, but finally when we came to Anniston in 1959 he bought a little radio station.

He didn't realize when he came here, he'd never heard of Anniston, Alabama.

He had somebody in Georgia a friend of his that he knew.

"Find me a station within a hundred miles of here."

Never dawned on him that Anniston, Alabama was within that a hundred mile radius.

He's never been in Alabama.

These guys were developing their own sources, doing what the news people were supposed to do.

It was Mother's Day and they had a newsmobile, a couple of them.

They were rigged with two-way radios, so they could do action.

What they called actualities from wherever they were.

So you could have Live News, and you could listen to what things, as things are happening on this radio station.

So he got word from his Assistant Manager, Bobby Price.

They had heard the Freedom Riders bus was coming into town.

So they met the Freedom Riders at the bus station when that bus pulled in.

(intense music) But he got on the next day and let this community have it.

"We know who these people are.

They shop with us every day and they do all kinds of things like this.

We're aware of this kind of stuff going around, this isn't the only thing that has happened.

How can we turn a blind eye of this?

We just can't keep doing this.

It's not right."

- I spoke for the white people, the white people rallied behind it and we kicked the living hell out of the niggas.

Sent the out of town niggas to the hospital and out of the State.

Went back to their hometowns where they ought have been.

And the niggas in St. Augustine got quiet and went back over nigga town where they belong.

- Kenneth Adams was the highest ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan in the Anniston area.

And I believe he carried the title Grand Dragon.

He ruled Anniston and he intimidated people into being racist because they were afraid of him.

And when Kenneth Adams said, "Jump now."

You just sort of said, "How high?"

And did it.

Because you were afraid your family would be hurt if you didn't.

- We had the Adam boys right out here, who said, "You couldn't stop at the Service Station.

You couldn't buy gas."

And they even went to Birmingham and you know, and attacked Nat King Cole.

So they were bad boys.

And that whole area was sorta known for the Klans.

And you know, it's a strange thing now that they were wearing the Klans hats to do all these things and yet they were in the banks in their suits.

(sombre music) - The photos that you see of the bus burning and the aftermath, are photos taken by a freelance photographer who was working here for The Anniston Star.

His name was Joe Postiglione and he was known to the Star staff as Little Joe.

Little Joe got a call from the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan here in Anniston, Kenneth Adams.

Kenneth called Joe and said, "Come and take a photograph of this event that we're planning."

Now can you believe that?

The audacity of that tells a lot about how brazen the Klan was.

- [Announcer] Highway 202 and the bus is on fire.

I repeat, the bus has been completely ensued in flames and there're people still-- - The photographs taken by Joe Postiglione appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the country.

Indeed around the world.

And it brought to the forefront of consciousness the brutality and the violence which was creeping in to the Southern States and into the Civil Rights Movement as a whole.

(intense music) (bus engine revving) - When we got to Anniston, for some reason the bus station was closed.

Which was strange as it was Mother's Day, and a beautiful day.

So a couple of Freedom Riders went across the street to get some sandwiches.

The bus driver got on the bus and he says, "I understand that the Greyhound bus has been set afire and they have taken the occupants to the hospital by the car loads."

Now we knew that our friends were on that bus.

(intense music) So the driver got back off the bus and talked to some people that were milling around the station.

He gets back on he said, "I'm not moving the bus till the niggas get to the back of the bus."

Well, of course we refused.

At that point, eight men get on the bus and they started punching us, starting with me and Herman.

And they were punching us and forcing us towards the aisle.

and once we got it in the aisle, they were forcing us towards the back of the bus.

Once we got midway of the bus, Dr. Bergman and James Peck came to our aid.

That really made them angry, to see these white men coming to help these students.

And they really just took it out on Dr. Berg and they began to stomp him on his chest and hit his wife and I begged them to stop.

They probably could have killed him on the bus.

But James Peck was a bleeder.

When they hit James, his blood coated the floor of the bus.

And here we are, they're forcing us students back towards the rear of the bus.

We're stomping over Dr. Bergman, we're slipping on James's blood.

It was just a mess.

Once they got us to the rear of the bus they physically threw us to the back.

One eyewitness says that they stacked us like pancakes in the back of the bus.

Once they were satisfied that we were in the back of the bus, they sat there midway of the bus and they taunted us all the way to Birmingham.

But we got into Birmingham and when we got to Birmingham and James was bleeding and stuff and he was beaten pretty badly, but he wanted he wanted to continue.

So I said, "Let's go."

And the entire wall of men came towards us.

James went down almost immediately and there's one guy, in the picture you can see he had a pipe.

And he's the one that I guess gave the knockout blow to me because he hit me in the head and that was the major injury that I received.

But when that photograph was taken, it startled them and they let me go.

I just walked away.

- They always kept a quarter in their pocket.

And when he walked out of the bus station, he had that quarter.

So he can make a phone call and in this instance Mr. Patterson called Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham.

And went to his church and that's where pretty much all the Freedom Riders from Anniston and Birmingham went the evening of May 14th, 1961.

- I looked at James Peck and Albert Bigelow's and all those guys and he says, you know, "Here, you don't have a care in the world.

I mean, you've got riches, you got social status.

And if you really wish that for my freedom, then surely as a black man, I can do the same."

And I guess that really motivated me even more so, the fact that they didn't have to.

I had to because it was, you know, for our people.

- You know, who and what could prepare you for what they encountered.

Mr. Patterson is always saying, "You know it's not gonna work unless it's non-violent."

You know, and that's something that he still believes to this day.

I mean we were doing only the things that normal people do.

We were normal and we were just expecting to be received in a normal manner.

And to all, the South that was not the case.

- When the bus was firebombed, the smoke, of course engulfed the bus.

And Hank Thomas felt that he would rather suffocate, he inhaled a bunch of smoke and said he would rather die on the bus than get off the bus.

You know, this is not a grown man.

This is a college kid, having to make that decision and having to make that choice.

You realize how perilous the situation was.

- When I first found out about the Freedom Riders and the risk that they were taking to engage in this movement, I thought they had to be afraid, but doing it afraid.

Sometimes selfless acts come out of just having empathy for other people and wanting to see change.

And it doesn't involve you having a concern for what happens to you, but more so for the fact that your act will make a movement for other people.

- We have to keep in mind whether we're thinking about John Lewis crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, or him being a Freedom Rider, that he understood that this was a long process and it was one that required a lot of patience.

But it also required a peaceful mission too.

- Well, we had a gentleman here who ran a service station.

He didn't sell anything except gas and oil.

He had four service stations, one on every entrance into Anniston.

Adams Service Station.

If you'd have stopped there, you was in danger.

- He was a notorious racist.

And I mean, just a fine strong dripping black hating racist.

That even for his time would have turned away many many white people on that even in that culture.

(engine revving) - Along about that time, they killed a fellow named Willie Brewster.

He pulled away from one of those service stations and somebody shot him in the back of the head with a punk bullet and killed him.

(intense music) - The murder of Willie Brewster sent shock waves throughout the city.

I mean, he's a black man, wasn't causing any harm, wasn't doing anything wrong and he was killed.

Shot in his car simply for being a black man.

- And they didn't care who it was.

They didn't even know who they were after.

It was just a random act of violence.

- The man had four little children and a wife who was pregnant.

When he was killed and they went to tell his wife what had happened, they say she had a miscarriage.

- [Tom] Back with the bus burning and all these perpetrators, they came to trial and nobody got convicted of any of that.

And that was kind of the way it was back then.

- My name is Josephine Ayers.

I'm the publisher of the Anniston Star.

I succeeded my husband who was publisher for 50 years.

He and several other community leaders founded the organization COUL.

The Committee On Unified Leadership.

I was a member of the original organization.

It was critical in leading the community to a relatively peaceful resolution of the possible violence that would accompany the integration of various institutions in other communities in the South.

My husband and I, and probably a dozen other community leaders gathered at the Donald's home.

By the end of the night, we had raised $20,000 to be used as a reward leading to the arrest of the murderer of Willie Brewster.

Here is a first-hand account from my husband's book In Love With Defeat.

"Do we stand back silently and let the whole ugly box of racial violence open up?"

- This time in 65 an all white jury, sat in on this and he was found guilty.

First time ever that white man had been found guilty of murdering a black man.

- [Cotina] How could a person be so disillusioned to believe superiority based on the color of their skin, something that they have absolutely no control over?

- I would say that, I have a legacy within the City of Anniston.

(melancholic instrumental music) So I would say my grandfather wore many hats.

I think above all he was an activist.

I think that he advocated for people, no matter where you come from.

No matter what you look like, no matter who you were connected to.

No matter what mistakes that you made.

I think that he was just essentially a revitalize, a game-changer.

- I think a lot about people who participate in selfless acts, that they decide to do something even if it affects them in a negative way or even if they don't know the dangers that come along with deciding to participate in that act.

And so, my thought about their decision is that they were equally as afraid as the people who had a different skin color but just decided that apathy could no longer exist.

- [Hank] I am so proud of the young people today.

Many of us old heads, so to speak, wonder what would happen to our movement in the 80s and the 90s.

We thought we saw a lot of apathy on the part of young folks, but this movement has absolutely thrilled me in terms of seeing the young people pick up the cause.

(melancholic instrumental music) - One thing that I do encourage my African-American friends, if white people wanna have conversations, they're already a little bit afraid to say anything.

So affirm them, allow them to have the conversation with you because that's how we bridge the gap between the communities.

And African-American people, don't be afraid to say what it is that you need to say.

I think that our youth should be empowered.

- If you don't know who Charles Person is, if you don't know who Hank Thomas is, I don't know if there's too much you can tell me.

Because you have to understand what has happened.

You have to understand what has gone on before.

And so many today dismiss that.

- I mean, you really honor them, not just by remembering them and thanking them, but following their leadership and example.

But at the same time, recognizing that it is an important story to tell.

And it is part of our story.

- You can be successful, but it has come time for you to move your demonstrations from the street, into the boardrooms, into the executive suites or Mayor's offices, Governor's office and talk these things out.

- It has been an emotional ride.

It has been a journey that probably needed to take place a long time ago for me, for my family, for my children.

But here we are.

And I'm grateful for the opportunities that have come out of the situations that are happening in our country.

I'm grateful for the conversations.

I would challenge everyone to make necessary changes that have an impact, lasting impact on our system today.

- [Tom] You need to get to a point where you're seeing that we have a common enemy and it's not each other.

- [Chris] People love different races, different cultures, different socioeconomic backgrounds, wealthy, poor, middle-class, acknowledging the inequities and the oppression.

And deciding not to just sit by and watch it happen, to literally put themselves in harm's way, risk their lives, to stand up for justice and to stand up for African-Americans who are being mistreated in this country.

And saying, "This country is better than that.

We are better than that."

- When people come to me with this feeling of, what can I do next?

Just don't be guilty.

Move out of necessity, move out of solidarity.

You know share in the life of someone who doesn't look like you and that's when necessary change takes place.

I think that we become very comfortable when something happens.

It's almost like we apply a lot of attention to it and we think, "Yay, you know change is happening and we're a part of the movement."

And then just like anything else, it starts to fade away.

And until we continue to strive towards breaking down these systems that allow these things to continue to happen, then we'll do this wave of, Hey here we are making a move.

And then we'll become very comfortable.

And here we are making a move and becoming very comfortable.

We've got to break down that system so that we can continue to see this progress take place.

(crowds chanting) - And we have to keep in mind that for the sake of Alabama, we have to make sure that we are constantly doing things to move the State forward because those things will improve our communities.

And when we improve our communities then, we bring about more opportunity for everyone to really have a chance at the American Dream and also to write a new narrative for these communities where so much happened, where so much blood was shed, but also where so much courage was demonstrated as well.

- Why not be a part of the change and the progression that I know is possible in this city, my home, where I come from, where I was pretty much raised and everything that I know derives from this place?

And so, knowing the fight that was had before me, knowing the battles that were won before me, really push me to be in this place to know that I too can be a part of this modern day change.

- Anniston has changed.

And I think it's all for the better.

I see a much more hopeful future now, than I did 50 years ago.

- But we have the power and we have the opportunity in ourselves to overcome more.

We don't have to take it.

The way people are oppressed is because they're convinced by the powers that be to be oppressed.

I'm encouraged because there is that window of opportunity now.

If we'll seize the initiative one-on-one, person to person, man to man, woman to woman, ever how it goes.

We can overcome that.

We don't have to believe, the lies that we're being told and that are being pushed on us.

- [Hank] Hats off to the young folks.

God bless them.

(upbeat music) - And when you look at the the aggregate of places that the National Park Service has, there are currently 413 places in this Nation.

The Park Service decided, we were going to change the way we talk about the Civil War.

We are gonna intentionally reframe it away from being a issue of States rights, but an issue of slavery and the spread of slavery.

And so we went about that in a very deliberative directive way.

We clearly understood that there're places that go from Civil War, to Civil Rights, to current issues in our nation around race.

There are missing pieces to that story and one of those is Anniston and the Freedom Riders.

(audience applauding) (intense music) - Hang in there.

Keep the faith.

Some of us are will stay with you.

Some of us are gonna fight with you.

Be good, be wonderful.

Hang in there, okay?

Good luck.

- [Mom] Hey honey, it's mom.

Just wanted to call and check in see how everything is going.

You'll probably say not to worry.

Everything is great, but we just, we miss you.

I'll call you back later.

(phone ringing) - How are you - Mom, everything's great.

I love it here.