American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Gov. John Patterson, 2 of 4

[INTERVIEWER]: And outside of Anniston there's another bus -- the Trailways bus -- that's coming from Atlanta, too. Talk about what happened to that bus as it got to Birmingham. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Well, unbeknownst to any of us, the Birmingham Police Department, headed up by Bull Connor, who was director of Public Safety of Birmingham, had made an agreement with the head of the Klan, the Klan people there in Birmingham, to give them 30 minutes of free time to beat up the Freedom Riders at the Trailways Bus Station. That was a Trailways bus station. And of course, we didn't know anything about that. And, of course, when the bus arrived, the Birmingham police were missing. They weren't there. And, of course, the Birmingham Police Department had at that time more policemen and better-trained policemen to handle things of that kind than the state of Alabama had troopers. So it was basically and fundamentally the city of Birmingham's responsibility at that point to maintain order. Nobody informed us that they wasn't going to do it. Nobody

informed us about the meeting either. And, of course, we know now that the FBI, local FBI office there was fully aware of what was going on. And had been asked by an informant that they had in the Klan -- they'd been asked by him what to do. And they said, "Go ahead and beat 'em up." FBI, imagine that. It's hard to believe it. And so when they arrived, sure enough, police were not there. And they waded- that Klan crowd waded into them and beat a bunch of them up real bad. [INTERVIEWER]: Ok, I just want to get the FBI's story separately, because I think it's really important. Because in some ways, it's the FBI's responsibility. So let me ask you- [JOHN PATTERSON]: Well it would at least be their responsibility to inform the governor and the director of Public Safety in the state. I mean, they had no reason not to trust me. I was not a Klansman -- they knew damn well I wasn't a Klansman. I don't like the Klan, I never did. [INTERVIEWER]: But they didn't trust you, the FBI. Or they didn't tell you, at least. [JOHN PATTERSON]: I don't know whether they-

I don't know why they didn't trust me. I certainly- if I'd known what I knew then, I wouldn't have trusted them, that's for sure. [LAUGHS] It's not a laughing matter, you know. We laugh about it, but that wasn't a laughing matter. It was a serious police matter -- no question about that. [INTERVIEWER]: I just want to get this as a separate kind of statement. So, there was this plan that was arranged with Bull Connor and the Klan members to just beat up these people for 15 minutes, they have free rein. The FBI knew about it. [JOHN PATTERSON]: For 30 minutes. Yes, the FBI knew about it. Yeah. [INTERVIEWER]: Just tell me that. Tell me the story again like I don't know. Tell me that the FBI knew. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Yeah, the FBI had an informant in the Klan. Gary Thomas Rowe was a local Klansman. He was from Savannah, and he was working as an undercover agent for the FBI in the Klan, and keeping them informed about what the Klan was doing -- and participating, himself, in roughing folks up to, as I

understand now -- to maintain his position in the Klan. You know, he had to do these things so he'd be credible. This is the argument, you know. But anyway, Rowe was undercover. He was there. He helped beat them up at the bus station. Now Rowe was not just an informant. He was not just a Klan informant. He was an employee of the Justice Department -- he drew a salary, and expense account, and all these things. This was not just an ordinary informant. They didn't tell us about it. And if Floyd Mann and I had known that the Birmingham Police Department were not going to do their duty -- their responsibility -- then we would have been fully justified in going in with state troopers and doing it for them, you know. But you have a sensitive state-local relationship here. If I said as governor, "I don't like the way you folks in

Birmingham are running your police business. I'm going to send my state troopers in there to take care of it for you," they would all go home -- dump it all on the state and go home, you know. There's a very delicate relationship that has to be thought about, you know. You can't just ignore that. And who would have ever believed the city of Birmingham would not have done their duty? I mean at that time, you would not have believed that! But after that, now, we didn't trust them anymore. And so when the time came for the bus- And, of course, they stayed there in Birmingham a while, in jail. And then Connor took them out of jail and carried them all up to the Tennessee line and turned them loose -- and they beat him back to Birmingham! [LAUGHTER] [INTERVIEWER]: I'm going to ask you about that in a moment, so let me just stay on track, if I can. That must have been not a very good day for you as governor, because both of these things happened in the space of a couple hours. The bus gets burned,

there's this riot -- I don't know what else to call it -- in Birmingham. It's on the news, it's everywhere. How did you feel when you learned that this bus has been burned and there's this beatdown in Birmingham? [JOHN PATTERSON]: Of course at that time, I didn't know that the FBI- the FBI agent had made a deal with them to give them- I didn't know at that time that Bull Connor and the Birmingham police had given them 30 minutes of free time. I didn't know that. I didn't learn that until later. I was amazed that the city of Birmingham didn't apparently try to police the bus station. We learned there that day at the bus- at the Birmingham Bus Station that we couldn't trust the Birmingham people anymore. And we certainly didn't intend to trust the Montgomery people, either. So when the bus finally left from Birmingham going to Montgomery, we had it escorted -- front and back by many state troopers and

cars, helicopters flying protection overhead. And then we had an assurance from the Montgomery Police Department that they would protect them at the Montgomery Bus Station, and that we didn't have to worry about it. Unbeknownst to us, they had made a similar deal themselves with the Klan -- the local Klan in Montgomery -- to give them a free hand at the bus station to beat up the Freedom Riders. By this time, Floyd Mann and I didn't trust them -- didn't trust anybody anymore. But we had state troopers right nearby. And Floyd and his deputy, Bill Jones, and a photographer named Tommy Giles -- state photographer -- were there at the bus station. And we had a couple of hundred state troopers right nearby -- waiting -- if needed. Suddenly, when the bus came in, there were no Montgomery policemen there. We weren't surprised by it this time. And then suddenly a mob appeared just out of nowhere, and attacked the passengers as they got off the bus. And they got two or three of them down on the ground and was beating on them. Floyd Mann stepped

in, straddled one of the men on the ground, pulled his pistol -- and so did his assistant Bill Jones -- and said, "If anybody else touches a man here, I'll kill him." And the crowd backed away. And Floyd saved them, really. Saved them. It's interesting that the bus station was right in the backyard of the federal courthouse. And Frank Johnson, the federal judge who later was going to handle these cases, was standing in his office looking down -- less than a hundred yards away, watching the whole thing himself. Isn't that interesting that would happen? [INTERVIEWER]: Ok, let's pause for a second. [JOHN PATTERSON]: ...almost minute to minute basis. Yeah, I was in the governor's office and in touch with Floyd, and I also had an aide assigned to the case, too. And I stayed right with them. And, yeah -- I was getting just almost instant communication. [INTERVIEWER]: What went through your mind? [JOHN PATTERSON]: Oh, I was mad as hell. I was really mad. I was mad not only at the Birmingham Police Department, but I was mad at the- Of course, already

coming over the- coming over the news, was a public- press conferences held by Robert Kennedy. [INTERVIEWER]: We established those, so we're not going with- are we? Yes? Never mind. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Real, real- real little bastard. You can put that on there. [LAUGHTER] [INTERVIEWER]: Let me start again- you can start again. You can tell me that story. So you said you're getting these reports, and you're mad as hell. Start at you're getting the reports. [TO CREW] Quiet, please, in the back. [JOHN PATTERSON]: We're getting these reports coming into my office, and Floyd Mann's keeping me advised on a minute-to-minute basis as to what was going on. And the thing was getting out of hand -- there's no question about it. It was getting out of hand. And I was very disturbed about it and also had a feeling in the back of my mind that we'd been double crossed -- that the Justice Department knew more about the thing than they were letting us know. Robert Kennedy had begun to appear on- in his office, making statements about the thing and urging the

protection of the Freedom Riders. And it's quite obvious that he, himself, and his people were involved in pushing the activity, you know. This was not a segregation/integration- integration thing. It was a law enforcement matter, and a very serious law enforcement matter. Somebody was going to get killed if something wasn't done about it. And this is what we were confronted with when the buses arrived in Montgomery- [LAUGHTER] and when the bus arrived in Montgomery, and the incident occurred, and the city police of Montgomery didn't show. The director of Public Safety -- L.B. Sullivan was who he was, he's deceased now -- but he had, himself, agreed with the Klan- to give the Klan some time to beat up the Freedom Riders at the bus station. And here we were. And we had got suspicious by this time, that we didn't trust anybody. And Floyd Mann had got his people drawn in very closely around that bus station. And sure enough, the city police didn't show. And by the time Floyd was able to

get his men in there- of course, he went in there first, himself, and straddled a man, and pulled his gun and backed the crowd off the fella, and got the people out. By that time, two or three of the people got injured. I don't think they got seriously injured, but they got injured. And one of them is now a Congressman from Georgia. What's his name? [INTERVIEWER]: John Lewis? [JOHN PATTERSON]: Yeah, Lewis. [INTERVIEWER]: Let me stop there, because I don't want to jump to Montgomery, because that's really a few days later. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Right, right. [INTERVIEWER]: I want to go back to that first day of the burning bus in Birmingham. Talk to me about what Bobby Kennedy was doing, right? And what you thought about what he was doing -- what your opinion was of Bobby, at that point. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Well, I had- he was calling me on- [INTERVIEWER]: Ok, you've got to say, "Bobby," here. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Yeah. Bobby Kennedy, who was the Attorney

General, was apparently -- from my point of view at that time -- was orchestrating the thing from Washington. He appeared to be- He kept demanding that they be given free passage -- and he was obviously, clearly on the side of the Freedom Riders -- and making demands that they be protected. And of course he had every right to do that. After all, he was Attorney General of the United States. But it also appeared that he was not cooperating with the efforts to protect these people. And our problem was to let the buses run on the highways and carry people and interstate commerce, but at the same safely -- be able to travel safely. You know, looking backing now, we could have taken over the whole thing and escorted everybody, but that wasn't what we really wanted to do. We wanted people to travel on the buses free of interference anywhere in Alabama, but we

wanted them to be able to travel safely. And we learned as we went along, after the bus burning near Anniston and then the incident in Birmingham -- all this taking place in a matter of hours, you know. And then there was some delay in Birmingham, you know, when they were putting them in jail and escorted them up to the Tennessee line, and they beat him back, beat him back. All this was Bull Connor's work. And then finally Kennedy -- Bobby Kennedy -- demanded that they be given a bus and sent on their way to Montgomery. Remember he said, "Get Mr. Greyhound on the telephone. I want to talk to Mr. Greyhound." This was his- He was deeply involved in the operation of the Freedom Riders. And I, personally, resented that. I really did. And we had some words about that -- we really did. But by the time they got to Montgomery and we- [INTERVIEWER]: Let's cut, because I don't want to go, "Then because of (unclear)." It's interesting. And it's interesting that this is what- I think it's part of the story. Tell me about your feelings about Bobby Kennedy.

[JOHN PATTERSON]: Well I met Bobby Kennedy during the campaign -- during the presidential campaign. He was the floor leader for his brother on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. He was the fellow we weren't directly with, with our delegation. I carried a delegation of people from Alabama to support Kennedy for president. It was a split delegation, split right down the middle. It was 30- I think 32 votes, and it was half for Lyndon Johnson and half for Robert Kennedy -- and I had a time keeping them together out there. Now Robert- we worked with Robert, who was the floor leader. And I had a lot of contact with him at that time, and it was pleasant. And I didn't have no problem with Robert. My trouble with Robert Kennedy came with the Freedom Riders. That's when my trouble started with him. I felt like, that they were not treating us right. Obviously, they were not telling us everything that was going on. I couldn't

understand why. In fact, I remember even saying to Robert Kennedy -- who called me every day -- I remember telling him, I said, "Why don't you just go out on the front steps of- [CELL PHONE RINGS] [INTERVIEWER]: Oh no. I thought this thing was off. [JOHN PATTERSON]: My wife's does that sometimes. Don't take it so hard. [LAUGHTER] [INTERVIEWER]: Ok, is it off? Ok, let's roll. You said something about why didn't Bobby Kennedy just go out on the steps? [JOHN PATTERSON]: Yeah, and just say, "Look, why don't you folks just stay home. If your job- If your intent is not to be a bona fide interstate passenger on a bus, and you're going for some purpose other than just riding an interstate bus somewhere, why don't you just stay home and mind your own business and everything will be all right." But of course, that was falling on deaf ears. They were down there to

test out- test the law, and in a way, test us. And they did a pretty good job of it, there's no question about that. And we -- looking at it in hindsight, you know, -- we probably could have done a better job if we'd had some idea of what was going to unfold. But we had nothing, no record to go on. We had no idea what was going to happen. We didn't know- we didn't know that the Klan that was going to beat up these Freedom Riders had infiltrated the police departments of Montgomery and Birmingham. We didn't know that. I might be naïve for not having known it, but I didn't really know it. It's hard to believe that. At that particular time, it was hard to believe that. [INTERVIEWER]: Tell me about your personal feelings about Bobby Kennedy? What did you think about Bobby Kennedy? Talk about the fact that as this thing goes on, your relationship -- whatever you had -- starts to deteriorate. [JOHN PATTERSON]: He was

abrasive. He was dictatorial. He talked to state officials like they were government employees. He didn't understand the federal-state relationship and how delicate it is. There is such a thing as a federal-state relationship. He didn't understand that. He looked upon us as his employees. He dictated to us just like, you know, like we were working in his office. He didn't understand our political problems -- and we had some, too. Everything he did was to further the political agenda of him and his brother. And I don't want to fault him for being loyal to his brother, and all of that, but he was a very abrasive and hard fellow to deal with. And I didn't trust him. I grew not to trust him. And we had real, real problems. And later on one night I told him, I said, "Quit."

[COUGHS] See, I would talk to him on the telephone, and then I would read about what I said in the newspaper. He'd immediately hold a press conference in Washington and tell the press what I said. And I would read about what I was saying in the paper. Well that's really not a good way to deal in situations like that. You really need to deal in confidence, you know, because you're dealing with law enforcement matters that are very serious. And I had some real difficulties with him. One night he called me at the governor's mansion. I was in bed -- it was 2 o'clock in the morning. He called me and told me that we didn't have enough policemen on a certain corner in downtown Montgomery. Yeah. This was after we had declared martial law, you know. And I told him, I said, "Look, don't- quit calling me. That's not my job to look after downtown Montgomery. Send a man down here. Send somebody down here to stay and live with

me that reports directly to you -- to be a liaison man, so you'll know what's going on directly from your own source." So what did he do? He sent John Seigenthaler down there. Now, I like John Seigenthaler. He was in the Kennedy administration and he was from the Nashville Banner, was where he was from. And he comes down there, John Seigenthaler comes down there. And he's got a fellow with him named John Doar, who's head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. They come to my office and check in, and then they go and check in to a motel right near the Capitol. And Seigenthaler gets up the next morning when the bus is coming into the bus station in Montgomery. He gets up, him and Doar. They put on some old work clothes -- leave their identity at the motel, rent a Montgomery County, Alabama, "U Drive It" automobile with an Alabama tag on it. And they go down to the bus station and get involved in the riot. They

pulled up at the curb, and there was a girl -- one of the girls on the bus -- there were several women chasing this girl and beating her with purses. And Seigenthaler reached out and grabbed her, ostensibly to save her, and tried to pull her into his car. Well nobody knew who he was. And it was a Montgomery, Alabama, car. Somebody hit him in the head and left him in the gutter beside the car -- the representative of the president of the United States. And they- Floyd's people picked him up and sent him out to the hospital. And when he got out to the hospital, the hospital people wouldn't treat him without a waiver, a signed waiver. And he wouldn't sign it and wouldn't identify himself and didn't have any identification on him. So he asked to use the telephone. So they got him a

telephone -- and he called the White House and got the president of the United States on the telephone to tell him about what had happened to him. How do we know that? The people at the switchboard -- they had switchboards in those days -- the people at the switchboard in the hospital listened in on his calls. You see, it was a comic opera in a way. Yeah. And I couldn't believe that he would send me a man down there like that. Now Seigenthaler and I have had some contact in recent years. He's not a bad guy, he's a nice fella. And he ticks it, you know -- he sympathizes with us a little bit about the Freedom Rider thing. [INTERVIEWER]: What was it that Seigenthaler did that was wrong, to you? [JOHN PATTERSON]: Well he was sent down there for the purpose of being a liaison man for the president and for the Ken- for Bobby Kennedy. To stay with me, and live with me, and watch, and see everything I did, and report back directly to them. This is why he was supposed to come down there. To go down to the bus station

with old work clothes -- disguised, really -- with a Montgomery County, Alabama, license plate on his car, and gets involved in the riot down there -- he's crazy to do that! Yeah, just crazy. I uh- We are- We are friendly, now, but we were not friendly then, I always say. [LAUGHTER] I told him, I said, "I asked them to send me a man down, and they sent me a fool down here!" [LAUGHTER] But anyway, doesn't that make you believe that they really didn't want to have anybody with me? I had all kinds of suspicions about that. Now, he never did come back and stay with me. Never did. [INTERVIEWER]: Ok, let's cut for some checks. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Of course, if I had it all to do over again, I'd do it completely differently, but you never get a second chance. [LAUGHTER]

[INTERVIEWER]: At anything. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Yeah, if we'd have- We had several highway patrol cars there where the bus burning was near Anniston. What we should have done is sacked up all of them right there. Sacked them all up and arrested them, and we'd have got the undercover guy. Yeah, we'd have got the undercover guy. [INTERVIEWER]: So, after the riot in Birmingham, finally, after a long series of things, that group of riders agrees to kind of fly out. They kind of give it up. [JOHN PATTERSON]: They were replaced, yeah. [INTERVIEWER]: They could fly out. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Correct. [INTERVIEWER]: The way I understand it is, at that point there was not this- they weren't going to be replaced. They just kind of said, "Ok, we can't make it." They were too beat up. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Yeah. [INTERVIEWER]: Right? And Kennedy and I guess you thought it was kind of

over for a minute. My question is what did you think- First, I guess- first question is what did you think as this first group of riders agrees to kind of quit and to get on planes and to go to New Orleans. It seems like it's over. What did you think? [JOHN PATTERSON]: Well I remember that very well. I was glad it was over, but it turns out it wasn't. [INTERVIEWER]: Let me ask you that again, and I don't want you to go forward. At that moment, you're glad it's over. I just want you to talk about being glad it's over. Ok, so talk about that, what did you think as these riders were getting on a plane and leaving and it's over? [JOHN PATTERSON]: When I heard that and found out that to be true, I felt like it was over. And I was very relieved that the thing was over, and nobody had really been killed. And I was glad of it. Unfortunately, though, yeah. It wasn't over.

[INTERVIEWER]: When you heard the rides would resume, what did you think? [JOHN PATTERSON]: I remember I was disappointed about it. But Floyd and I had a meeting, and we decided that we would use all the state's forces, and we wouldn't trust anybody. We would use all the state's forces to enforce and to protect these people until they got out of Alabama. And that's when we decided to do it, yes. It's too bad Floyd's not living. He's gone, he's dead. [INTERVIEWER]: Yeah, I would have loved to have talked to him. Sounds like an amazing guy. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Bill Jones, his assistant, is also deceased. Tommy Giles is living, the photographer that was there that day is presently the state photographer. [INTERVIEWER]: Right, yeah. Ok, so the second group of riders now comes. Were you involved at all with Bull Connor when he decided to take them back to the Tennessee border? [JOHN PATTERSON]: No. We had nothing to do with that at

all, nothing. We were not conferred about it, and had nothing to do with it. Did not try to inject ourselves into it, either. [INTERVIEWER]: Ok, tell me that story. Can you tell me what happened? So the second group of riders gets to Birmingham. What did Bull Connor do? [JOHN PATTERSON]: He arrested them, as I remember. Arrested them and put them into County Jail- City Jail. And then later, loaded them all up and carried them up to the Tennessee line, where they all beat him back, they beat him back to Birmingham. I believe that's what happened. [INTERVIEWER]: And you're the governor, and you didn't know anything about this? [JOHN PATTERSON]: Right. [INTERVIEWER]: So Bull Connor's just acting on his own. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Well, he's the police commissioner of the city of Birmingham. The government has nothing to do with the daily operations of the police department of the city of Birmingham. There is a- not only is there a federal-state relation that's very sensitive, but there's a state-municipal relation also that's involved here. If you don't respect that and understand that, you can't have good law enforcement anywhere. He had the authority to do what he did --

I assume he had it. He didn't have to ask my permission for anything. He answered to the people of Birmingham. [INTERVIEWER]: Ok, so Bull Connor did this on his own. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Yes, oh yes. Now he never did anything for me. I mean, he and I were not friends. I never liked the man, he never supported me for governor. He was for George Wallace, he wasn't for me. I didn't like him. In fact, I was a little bit afraid of him, yeah. He was so unpredictable. [INTERVIEWER]: Yeah, Bull Connor seems like a kind of one-of-a-kind guy. [JOHN PATTERSON]: Well, those riots in Birmingham, in which he sicced the dog -- police dogs -- on children and turned the fire hoses on children there. I'm not saying it's right for them to send the children downtown to do the demonstrating, but they should never have sicced the dogs and turned the hoses on them. And all that on national television. Believe you me, we didn't come off looking good in that thing at all.

And that's one of- that's another one of the things that created such an atmosphere across this country that the Voting Rights Act of '64 was passed and enforced. And it was no question it was- [LAUGHTER] It was not very well handled. There's no question about that. And we did not reflect very good in national television. [INTERVIEWER]: Let's change tapes.