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Civil rights activists share stories at Beale

BY CAMILLE GAVIN Contributing writer
gavinarts@aol.com | Saturday, Jan 28 2012 10:00 PM

Last Updated Saturday, Jan 28 2012 10:00 PM

One of the most terrifying acts of violence during the civil rights era -- the firebombing of a bus full of activists in Anniston, Ala. -- would have a deep, lifelong impact on two people who, on the surface, couldn't have been more different: a 12-year-old white girl, who lived nearby, and a young black Los Angeles college student witnessing the horrifying events 2,000 miles away.

Both will be in Bakersfield Saturday to speak about their experiences at the Harlem & Beyond oral history presentation at Beale Memorial Library.

And their experiences -- like those of so many other activists in the movement -- were fraught with danger and sacrifice.

Janie Forsythe McKinney remembers a scene of chaos and confusion as she rushed through the crowd to take water to the survivors stumbling off the smoke-filled bus that spring day in 1961. Claude Liggins, 20 at the time of the incident, was so haunted by the news reports that he became a Freedom Rider, an activist who rode buses through the South to challenge racial segregation. As a result of his activism, Liggins spent 43 days in a Jackson, Miss., jail in that summer.

Their memories of the event are still fresh, their stories compelling. Recently, both recalled the burning of the bus and the aftermath during individual telephone interviews.

"I heard people crying out for water and I knew what I needed to do," said McKinney, now 63 and a resident of Thousand Oaks. "The water bucket was almost too heavy to carry -- I couldn't carry it plumb full; I had to put it down every foot or two."

Unwittingly, McKinney became a key focus of FBI agents for a short time following the bus-burning.

"I actually saw the firebomb being thrown, but there were a lot of men around the bus and I didn't see who did it," she said. "The FBI questioned me for days after that but I couldn't tell them anything, so I guess they finally gave up on me."

And there were reactions from some of her classmates as well.

"Some of the Grand Dragon's kids went to our school and they would taunt me," she said. "They called me the N-word, called me an N-lover. But one day I said to them, 'I love you, too,' and after that they stopped."

Liggins, 71, heard the news on his way home from his night job at a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles.

"I had heard Martin Luther King speak at the Sports Arena and right after Anniston, that's when I joined the CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) movement," he said. "On June 25, I was with the first (Freedom Riders) group from Los Angeles that flew to New Orleans for (non-violence) training and then took a train to Jackson, Miss."

Upon their arrival, his group -- made up of blacks and whites -- walked into the whites-only waiting room. The local police asked the blacks to leave. After refusing to do so, they were arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace and taken to nearby Mississippi State Prison, also known as Parchman Farm, which already contained several hundred Freedom Riders who had been imprisoned in previous weeks.

"We kept singing and the guards kept telling us to stop, but we didn't," Liggins said. "At first they took our mattresses away from us; then they put some of us in a hell-hole that they used for a latrine."

Liggins and the others were kept in the approximately 6-by-6-foot confinement for about 30 minutes, he said, but the men were "packed like sardines and couldn't breathe."

Soon they were demanding that the guards let them out.

"I was the spokesman for the group," Liggins said. "There was a little window in the door; the guard opened it and said he'd let us out of I said 'Please.' I didn't want to give up too easily so I wouldn't say it at first."

But finally -- after several demands on the guard's part and pressure from other prisoners -- Liggins acquiesced, and the men were led back to their cells.

Last year, when Liggins returned to Jackson for the Freedom Riders' 50th anniversary, the reception was very different.

"The city rolled out the red carpet for us," he said, chuckling at the thought. "We had a police escort and the governor was there."

Even so, Liggins, who was born in Lake Charles, La., but has lived and worked in Los Angeles all of his adult life, believes things haven't really changed that much overall.

"I had more hope then than I do now," he said. "There's no colored and white signs anymore but discrimination is still here; people have different ways of expressing it."

McKinney, a technical writer who works in human resources and training at UCLA, met Liggins at a Freedom Riders reunion in 1991. The two have spoken at length about their experiences, both keenly aware at the time that their actions were in defiance of authorities.

"I had been worried for several days because I knew the Ku Klux Klan had issued an order that something was going to happen," McKinney said. "My dad told us about it but he didn't know exactly what it was."

The Klan, and its Grand Dragon, a man named Kenneth Adams, who has since died, was a powerful element where she lived, an area about five miles outside of Anniston.

McKinney said her father wasn't active in Klan activities but he knew what was going on.

"You didn't speak out against Kenneth Adams, or you'd find yourself strapped to a tree," she said. "That's just the way it was."

McKinney also is featured in the film "American Experience: The Freedom Riders," a PBS documentary that will be shown Thursday evening at the Beale Library.

"I'm really kind of uncomfortable talking in front of people," she said. "But if you can be an inspiration to people, I believe it's your duty to do it."