Night on Fire
Page 16
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There were more famous events in the history of the civil rights movement, many of which took place in Alabama—Selma, the Montgomery bus boycott, the bombing of a Birmingham church. But in some ways it all began in Anniston, in a bus, in the lives of misguided people who, building on years of resentment and hate, did awful things while good people, like Billie and her father, stood by and watched.
Billie Sims, Jarmaine Jones, Grant McCall, and their families are fictional, but the events against which their story is told are true. On Mother’s Day 1961, the Freedom Riders came to Anniston. An angry crowd surrounded their bus at the Greyhound station, then followed it to Forsyth & Son Grocery outside of town, where they terrorized the riders and burned the bus. It seemed that the only person who tried to help the riders was little Janie Forsyth, who just a week earlier had won the state spelling bee.
A few days later, those same victims were confronted and beaten at the Birmingham and Montgomery bus stations, the latter of which is now a museum dedicated to the Freedom Riders. The following Sunday, the riders attended a meeting at Montgomery’s First Baptist Church, along with the church’s pastor, Ralph Abernathy; Birmingham civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth; CORE’s James Farmer; and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King spent much of the evening on the phone with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, trying to get the attention of an administration more interested in Moscow than Montgomery. Events in the story were taken from eyewitness accounts and film footage. A few church members really did bring guns but never used them.
I first learned of these events when I saw Stanley Nelson Jr.’s magnificent documentary Freedom Riders. I was riveted by the interview with Janie Forsyth McKinney, who recalled, “I went to the house and got a bucket of water and a stack of Dixie cups, and I walked right out into the middle of that crowd.” Stunned by Janie’s bravery, I wondered what it would have been like to grow up in Anniston at that time and witness those events. It was the birth of Billie Sims.
Surprisingly little has been written about this important episode. The best book is Raymond Arsenault’s Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, which was later republished in an abridged version when the documentary film was shown on PBS’s American Experience. Some of the Freedom Riders have written their own accounts, which give a more personal view.
One of the best sources of information is the Anniston Star, historically one of the South’s outstanding newspapers. The day-by-day reporting described in this book is accurate and the articles quoted are real, though Tom McCall and his son, Grant, are fictional stand-ins for the heroic group of real-life reporters and photographers who covered the story.
As helpful as all these accounts were, the most inspiring was given to me by an elderly deacon at First Baptist Church one day in late February, when I had driven to Alabama to finish my research and see firsthand the places that would be in my story. I arrived at the church on a Saturday morning, hoping to snap a few pictures of the outside and, if I was lucky, to get a glimpse inside.
When I knocked on the back door, I was greeted by Benjamin E. Beasley, who, it turned out, was one of the church elders and saints. He and a few parishioners were busy mixing up pots of food for an event later that day, but he was generous enough to take nearly an hour and introduce me to his church, which he treated as an old friend.
He showed me the sanctuary with its stately organ pipes and stained-glass windows; the little office where Martin Luther King negotiated by phone with Robert Kennedy; and, most glorious of all, the tower and its beautiful old bell. He rang it for me, then told me proudly that his mother, Mildred Beasley, had been the organist that day at the Freedom Rider meeting, over fifty years earlier. She had started at three o’clock in the afternoon and had played off and on all night to inspire and comfort the congregation. I’ve tried to capture something of her spirit, as well as her son’s, in the character of Gus.
I am grateful to Deacon Beasley, as well as to the librarians and researchers at the Anniston Public Library, the Freedom Rides Museum, the Alabama State Archives, and Vanderbilt University. I’m indebted to the students at Meigs Magnet School in Nashville, whose excitement when I told them about my Freedom Rider project was a constant source of inspiration.
Kristin Zelazko, my editor at Albert Whitman, caught the excitement and has been a champion for the book and for my writing ever since. Deepest gratitude to Kristin and the Albert Whitman team for their support and enthusiasm.
It was a special moment when Kristin put me in touch with Janie Forsyth McKinney, now living in Los Angeles and working at my alma mater, UCLA. Janie graciously read the manuscript, confirmed information about that terrible day and her part in it, and offered suggestions for a more accurate depiction of her father and his store. Meeting her has been an unexpected treat.
Heartfelt thanks go to my father and mother, Paul and Ida Sue Kidd, who grew up in the South and taught their children that all people deserve appreciation and respect, no matter what their race or ethnic origin.
And, as always, I’m most deeply grateful to my wife, Yvonne Martin Kidd, and my daughter, Maggie Kidd. They are my shining stars.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Ronald Kidd
Design by Jordan Kost
Cover images © David Wardle
Article on vii from the Montgomery Advertiser.
Articles on 71, 108, 126, and 256 from the Anniston Star.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1740-4
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