MAY 14, 1961

On this Mother's Day, a group of Freedom Riders traveling by bus from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans arrived in Anniston, Alabama. A mob of white men led by a Klansman attacked the bus with baseball bats and iron pipes. They also slashed the tires. 

After the attack ended, the hobbled bus pulled over, the mob hurled a firebomb into the bus, and someone cried out, “Burn them alive.” The riders escaped as the bus burst into flames, only to be beaten with pipes by the mob. 

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth organized several cars of Black citizens to rescue the injured Freedom Riders. The photograph of the Greyhound bus engulfed in flames, the black smoke filling the sky became an unforgettable image of the civil rights movement.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Gov. Tate Reeves has vetoed several bills passed by the Legislature, but lawmakers will not reconvene Tuesday to attempt to override them.

On Monday, the last day for him to address bills passed in the 2024 legislative session, the governor vetoed a bill transferring money between state agencies, and part of another similar transfer bill. He vetoed four bills restoring voting rights to people convicted of felonies. He let 16 such bills restoring voting rights pass.

Before legislators adjourned earlier this month, they set aside one day – Tuesday — to possibly return for the purpose of overriding gubernatorial vetoes. When legislators provided themselves the option to return on Tuesday, there was a belief they would need to do so to take up an expected veto by Reeves of a bill to expand Medicaid to provide health care for the working poor. But late in the session, legislators could not reach a compromise on efforts to expand Medicaid and the measure died.

Reeves had also vetoed a bill late Friday.

Reeves said he vetoed Senate Bill 2180 because it required the Capitol Police Force to enforce ordinances of the city of Jackson. The Capitol Police Force has jurisdiction in all of the city and primary jurisdiction in a portion of the city known as the Capitol Complex Improvement District.

The governor said the bill might have prevented the Capitol Police from working with federal officials to detain undocumented immigrants.

But, according to language in the bill, it did not require the Capitol Police to enforce city ordinances, but said they may enforce the ordinances, such as to control loud noises.

The bill also removed the requirement that people get permission from Capitol Police officials to protest outside of state-owned buildings, such as the Governor's Mansion. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the requirement of a permit from Capitol Police for protests last year.

The bill also would have added another judge to hear misdemeanor cases in the Capitol Complex Improvement District.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

MAY 13, 1862

During the Civil War, Robert Smalls and other Black Americans who were enslaved commandeered an armed Confederate ship in Charleston. Wearing a straw hat to cover his face, Smalls disguised himself as a Confederate captain. His wife, Hannah, and members of other families joined them.

Smalls sailed safely through Confederate territory by using hand signals contained in the captain's code book, and when he and the 17 Black passengers landed in Union territory, they went from slavery to freedom. He became a hero in the North, helped convince Union leaders to permit Black soldiers to fight and became part of the war effort.

After the war ended, he returned to his native Beaufort, South Carolina, where he bought his former slaveholder's home (and allowed his widow to live there until her death). He served five terms in Congress, one of more than a dozen Black Americans to serve during Reconstruction. He also authored legislation that enabled South Carolina to have one of the nation's first free and compulsory public school systems and bought a building to use as a school for Black children.

After Reconstruction ended, however, white lawmakers passed laws to disenfranchise Black voters.

“My race needs no special defense for the past history of them and this country,” he said. “All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

He survived slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the beginnings of Jim Crow. He died in 1915, the same year Hollywood's racist epic film, “Birth of a Nation”, was released.

A century later, his hometown of Beaufort opened the Reconstruction Era National Monument, which features a bust of Smalls — the only known statue in the South of any of the pioneering congressmen of Reconstruction. In 2004, the U.S. named a ship after Smalls. It was the first Army ship named after a Black American. A highway into Beaufort now bears his name.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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