Interview With John Lewis (2009)

In Rock Hill, you had the first sign, for you, of violence. Tell me that story. On May 9th, 1961, when my seatmate, a white gentleman named Albert Bigelow from Connecticut, the two of us were seated together. We got off of the bus and approached a waiting room that said, White Waiting. And the moment we started through the door, a group of young white men attacked us, beat us, and left us lying in a pool of blood. And when we were able to get up, local law enforcement individuals came along and said, Do we want to press charges? And we said, No. We believed in nonviolence. We accepted nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. We didn't strike back. We accepted the blows.

Our struggle was not against these young men. Our struggle was against unjust laws, against customs and tradition. When these men attack you in Rock Hill, did it make you think, Well, maybe this isn't going to be so easy, so simple? Because until that time, you had kind of been free of violence. And you had gone through a good portion of the Upper South, at least, without this violence. Did that change your thinking about what was going to come? After we had been attacked in Rock Hill and suffered the abuse, the violence, I knew that this was more the Upper South and we had to go much farther. We had to make it through Georgia. We had to make it through Alabama. And we had to go into Mississippi. And we had to go on to New Orleans.

Somehow, in some way, I felt that it was not going to get any better. It was probably going to get worse. Because along the way, a great many people didn't know about the Freedom Rides. And so after one incident occurred, more people heard about the Freedom Rides. And more people would turn out to a bus station and observe what was happening. And that's exactly what happened.