American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Janie Forsyth McKinney, 1 of 2

[Interviewer] So I want-wanted to talk about kinda what you had heard before the Freedom Riders, Freedom Riders came, or had been coming just set it up, you know 'when I was twelve, and I lived right outside of Anniston and I remember when we heard...' [producer] Sorry, sorry, cut. Rolling. ?inaudible? here we go and we're rolling, and we have speech. [Interviewer] Ok so, I wanted Tell me again how you heard about the Freedom Riders Coming, and what you ?inaudible? ?inaudible? I was twelve and and I lived right outside of Anniston i was twelve years old at the time and i lived right outside of Anniston on the on the Birmingham Highway. My father used to tell stories at the table and talk about current events in and whatnot and he was mostly in a monologue because nobody engaged him in conversation about politics or race but one day he said that there were some outside agitators coming down from the north and that he and some of his friends had a little surprise party planned for 'em and that they were going to get a big surprise and he kind of laughed and i didn't know what that meant at the time. [producer?] can we just get that one more time, we had a car go by

You don't have to say that no one wanted to engage with him... that was great - setting it up well ok i was twelve years old at the time and i lived in a little frame house five miles outside of anniston on the birmingham highway we had heard that there were outside agitators coming down from the north and my father had mentioned that he and his friends had a little surprise waiting for them that they were going to throw us a surprise party that's how i heard about it and i still didn't know what it meant when i heard that. [producer?] ok. I'm sorry to do this. I'm going to ask you one more time. You were great. [producer?] You were great, I just keep thinking about more stuff. If you could just say that mention the story

Forsythe and Son in some groceries. of course the son was a joke and he wasn't goin' to come in that store okay i was twelve years old at the time and i live with my family five miles out of anniston on the birmingham highway we had a family grocery store right next to the house and the name of that was forsyth and son grocery well my father had found out that there was some outside agitators coming from the north and i didn't know what that meant but he did say that he had, he and some of his friends, were planning a big surprise party for em and they were going to get a big surprise when they got to anniston and then he laughed. [producer?] inaudible ok my family and i had come

from church we went every sunday and my grandfather was at our visiting our home that day and he was watching a baseball game a commotion came up outside and he was hollering what is that, what is that is that and and i looked outside and there was a crowd of people gathering around a bus and crowds were gathering into the yard they were lined up and down the road and a side road to our house. I mean people were everywhere and comin' in more and more and they were standing there drinkin' sodas and watching so i didn't know what was going on either but i went to the corner of the store and started watching from a better vantage point so i could see and the uh, a bunch of men surrounded the bus. And suddenly an arm, it seemed like an interminable wait before anything happened. It as just like well here we all are what are we doing here but suddenly I saw an arm come up out of the crowd

a white arm and it had something like a chain or a crowbar or something like that in it and he broke out the back window of the bus the arm went down. the same arm came back up again and lobbed something into the hole that he just made with the uh crowbar whatever it was. [inaudible] We had just gotten back from back from church and there was a commotion outside that didn't know what it was and the bus had pulled up in a my father's parking lot and people were coming in cars after it and parking up and down the road and standing around waiting for something so i walked to the front of the store to see if i could tell what was going on and i saw a crowd of men surrounding the back of the bus and they did nothing for quite a while but suddenly an arm went up from the middle of the crowd and i didn't see anything except

a white arm in a beige plaid shirt came up and broke the window with a crowbar and when he put his arm back down it came back up again with some kind of device that he had stuck in the hole he just made and then the bus started smoking. The incendiary device started smoking. then it broke into flames and i was just I was stunned. [inaudible] Well, the people that were surrounding the bus were agitated, they were all highly energetic. Their families and the children and the women were just sort of impassively watching like you would watch a golf game really it look like a golf crowd [inaudible] The southern mind is very complicated. It

is a dichotomy. On one hand they are the most gentle meekest kindest people on earth on a one to one basis on the other hand if you get them into a mob mentality they forget that the same person they had befriended before is a human being and i don't understand it but i don't understand too was how they can have black domestics in the house with their food in their children and raising their family and come in and going and still expect their children to have a hatred in their hearts when the very person they considered to be like their mother is so beloved to them. i never did get that and i think that's why i was different. [producer?] what was so wrong with sitting together on a bus? Why did that.. Race mixing, miscegenation. Um, theres something about a black man that scares white people. It's like he's like primal.

like all like all, sex and impulse and everybody was uh, well I wasn't, but most people were afraid of them. [inaudible] why it made a difference when you sat on a bus? I don't know all I know is that the blacks weren't in the back of the bus and the whites weren't at the front of the bus the way god intended and why that was so maddening i don't really get it but it did it seemed to them that that the blacks were penetrating some sort of barrier barrier that they had no right to come through. this is my place and you can't come here and it is not a place place it's a psychological place. its a status place it's uh almost like having a whole group of people as pets where you know you feed them and you're nice to them and all at that but you don't let

you know the pet always is the pet something less than you are and i didn't subscribe to any of that. so lets look at this pet metaphor. so so so sitting on the bus is somehow broke this kind of pet barrier. is that what you're saying? i suppose. i'm hardly qualified to be an apologist for a racist because i really don't know how they think I really don't understand it. especially with pearl. so what does this sitting next to someone on a bus or eating at a lunch counter how does that break i think that there's another factor at work here

i think the southern men and that particular socio economic stratum felt like losers. I mean management stomped on them, rich white people stomped on 'em and they couldn't get a break anywhere so they took it out on somebody that they could consider less than themselves. i think a lot of it was was just frustration that somebody was going to take, take what they had. take what they worked so hard to build and they couldn't stand to watch that and sitting next to a person on the bus was the beginning of that barrier coming down and they couldn't stand it [inaudible] [inaudible] Well the [inaudible] the people on the bus were in quite a quandary if they came out they had to face the white mob if they stayed in there were going to burn to death or die of smoke inhalation

so they pushed their way out of the bus and spilled out into the yard and the men that were surrounding the bus started beating them with clubs and baseball bats and calling out nasty things to them like We're going to roast you alive you know and that's when that's when i got really mad I really got mad and then i heard people whose throats were husky with smoke calling for water and I just said you know Jenny that's one thing you can do you can take them some water so i went to the side of the house and filled up a bucket with water from the spigot and took em water in a stack of dixie cups and i walked right out into the middle of that crowd i picked me out one person one woman who reminded me of pearl and i started with her. I took her a glass of water. I washed her face. I held her gave her water to drink. and as soon as i thought she was gonna be okay i got up

and picked out somebody else and I went on and on. And apparently i went at it for quite a while because Hank said that I had filled the bucket up several times. I don't personally remember it but i was afraid I knew that what I was doing was certainly going to irritate at least irritate and possibly dangerously incese the people who had set this whole drama up as i was undermining it but i didn't care. I did not care.