Interview With John Seigenthaler, Special Assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (2009)

[Seigenthaler] Well, the first notice of it, I guess, was on Sunday evening. The bus had been stopped just before they got to Anniston, Alabama. The Klan put up a roadblock and bombed and burned the bus. And, of course, there was news about it. But as I recall, it was Sunday night. I know that sometime Sunday night, Simeon Booker called me. And I called the Attorney General. And I guess the first thing I felt, and I'm sure he, that the Attorney General felt, was shattered hope. We should have known it couldn't have gone like this.

And the full impact of it really didn't dawn on the Attorney General, I think, until the next day when we sat down in the office and began to talk about what was to be done. Burke Marshall immediately was on top of it. He was milking the FBI for any information that they had. And all of the reports were tragic. There were people who were beaten, a man named Peck literally had his brains scrambled. I mean, he was never the same until his death. They bombed the bus, set fire to it.

Some of the Freedom Riders couldn't get off, suffered smoke inhalation. And the next day, Burke Marshall, by that time, did get information that they had voted among themselves, not to continue on the bus. They physically were not able to. I mean, the beatings had been intensive, and almost all of them suffered some injury. And then after they decided that they wouldn't go forward with the bus ride, that the bus ride would end, they then went to the airport to leave. And of course, that was in the local news and within no time a crowd had gathered at the airport.