Tommy Langston

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Langston's photo from the attack on Freedom Riders on May 14, 1961

Tommy Langston (born c. 1924; died October 24, 2013) was a photographer for the Birmingham Post-Herald.

On Mother's Day, Sunday, May 14, 1961, a Trailways bus from Atlanta with Freedom Riders on board arrived at the Birmingham Trailways station where the Riders were accosted by Ku Klux Klan members and National States Rights Party militants. Langston was at Acton's Camera Store near the station. He caught wind of the commotion and snapped an infamous photograph of the mob in action before being chased out and kicked on the ground. The photo was published five-columns wide in the next morning's paper and attracted national attention because it showed FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe in the violent mob.