Sixty years after he was beaten in the back of a bus, a Freedom Rider makes peace with Anniston

Phillip Tutor, The Anniston Star, Ala.
·8 min read

May 8—Anniston, as Charles Person's original story goes, was neither city nor destination. But it became a potential killing field, fueled by animus and disgust, a place where men slipped in pools of their own blood and feared the day's sunrise would be their last.

The youngest of the original Freedom Riders, then an 18-year-old Black college student and civil rights activist, listened to the warning a white man gave him as their Trailways bus traveled west from Atlanta on Mother's Day 1961:

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Phillip Tutor — ptutor@annistonstar.com — is a Star columnist. Follow him at Twitter.com/PTutor_Star.