Less than five minutes after the bus door opened in Montgomery, official Washington knew that pipes and bare knuckles nullified all the painstaking federal-state agreements. Seigenthaler, driving slowly toward the scene through a mass of bystanders, first saw suitcases flying upward in the distance. He did not yet know that this was the Freedom Riders’ luggage being thrown into the air—smashed open as trophies—but he could sense the contagion of a riot.
