File:Trailways mob.jpg

Freedom Riders under attack by an armed mob at the Trailways Station in downtown Birmingham on May 14, 1961. Photographed by Birmingham Post-Herald staff photographer Tommy Langston.

The man being beaten in the foreground was misidentified in the newspaper as Freedom Rider Jim Peck, but later identified as George Webb, a local man who had come to the station to pick up his fiancée, Mary Spicer, a passenger on the bus from Anniston who was not participating in the demonstrations.

The attackers identified in the photo include FBI informant Tommy Rowe (with his back to the camera) and Eastview 13 Klavern members Robert Conaway (left foreground) and Billy Holt. The man wielding the club has not been identified and was presumed to have been part of the group from the National States Rights Party that was also present to "greet" the demonstrators. Spicer recognized him as one of a group of men who boarded in Anniston and attacked the Freedom Riders there.

Spicer's flight from the station through the back door into an alley alerted Langston to the commotion. He went in through the same door and, before his eyes could adjust to the dark, captured this single shot. He was chased out of the building, knocked to the ground, and kicked repeatedly by a group of Klansmen. His camera survived the beating, however.

References

• McWhorter, Diane (2001) Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743226488