Beyond the Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution in a Southern Town

by James Phillips Noble, William B. McClain (Foreword), Nan Woodruff (Introduction)

Anniston, Alabama, is a small industrial city between Birmingham and Atlanta. In 1961, the city’s potential for race-related violence was graphically revealed when the Ku Klux Klan firebombed a Freedom Riders bus. In response to that incident, a few black and white leaders in Anniston took a progressive view that desegregation was inevitable and that it was better to unite the community than to divide it. To that end, the city created a biracial Human Relations Council which set about to quietly dismantle Jim Crow segregation laws and customs. This was such a novel notion in George Wallace’s Alabama that President Kennedy phoned with congratulations. The Council did not prevent all disorder in Anniston―there was one death and the usual threats, crossburnings, and a widely publicized beating of two black ministers―yet Anniston was spared much of the civil rights bitterness that raged in other places in the turbulent mid-sixties. Author Phil Noble’s account is carefully researched but told from a personal viewpoint. It shows once again that the civil rights movement was not monolithic either for those who were in it or those who were opposed to it.

Genres: History

172 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[Drick · Rating 4 out of 5]

On Mother's Day 1961, Anniston, AL made the national news when a bus filled with Freedom Riders heading out of Anniston to Birmingham was set on fire by a group of local members of the KKK. Riders on the bus escaped alive but many were badly injured. Following this incident two black ministers called on Rev. Phil Noble to discuss how the churches - Black and White - could work together to bring racial justice to Anniston. This books tells the story of the courageous men who made up Anniston's Human Relations Council - purportedly the first in a Southern city - led by the author Rev. Noble. This book relates the first two years of the Council's work made up of 5 Whites and 4 Black to begin to bring down the walls of segregation. For Rev. Noble and the other white members the goal was progress with limited violence, for the blacks the progress was too slow but enough to keep them engaged. The book is written obviously from Noble's White perspective, but shows what happens when courageous Whites joined their Black counterparts to work for the justice all knew to be necessary. At the same time Dr. King was decrying the inaction of the White moderates in Birmingham in his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", the White moderates, like Noble, in Anniston stepped up and were able to bring progress with relative peace (there still were many acts of violence and people killed) even in the face of strong segregationist opposition. This is a story not often heard in the days of the Civil Rights South and so is worth exploring.

[Joan Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A window into history

If you do not remember the civil rights movement years, read this account of a small slice of it in one southern town through the eyes of one Presbyterian minister. I am proud to know Dr. Noble.

[Jeff Vaughan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story of the people of Anniston, AL, and their handling of integration issues during the civil rights movement. The author, a white presbyterian pastor in 1960s Anniston, makes the decision to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

My grandfather, Miller Sproull, was one of people in this book. I had heard his stories of the events, and it was so interesting to be able to read about them.