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| Areawide Community Transportation System (ACTS) buses take on passengers at Anniston, AL's Amtrak station in July 2019. 58 years earlier, a Ku Klux Klan mob attacked the first racially-integrated intercity buses to serve the town. (Photo by me) |
Staring
out the window of Amtrak’s New Orleans-bound Crescent train as it entered
Anniston, AL on a recent Saturday, I caught a view of New Flyer of America’s recently-expanded
bus factory. The New Flyer factory gives
Anniston, which lost
5.8 percent of its population from 2010 to 2017, a much-needed economic boost.
Transit
agencies throughout the U.S. – including New York City Transit, whose Select
Bus Service buses lined the facility as our train rolled past, and the Maryland
Transit Administration, which recently spent
$81.3 million on New Flyer buses now operating in Baltimore – supply funds that
the factory’s 750 workers pass on to local businesses.
A couple minutes past
the factory, on the other side of the tracks, stood one of those businesses: an
awning supply shop with two large Make America Great Again signs on its storefront.
As
we pulled into Anniston Station, where Areawide Community Transportation System
(ACTS) buses were taking on riders, I recalled the events of my prior trip on
the Crescent, two years ago. That 2017 spring day – with DC
Circulator buses lining the New Flyer facility – our train stopped just
beyond Anniston due to a disabled Norfolk Southern freight train blocking the
tracks ahead. We sat still for more than two hours before the conductor, having
given up on a quick resolution to the problem, ordered our train back to the
station, where we remained until the freight train was finally fixed.
A
white passenger accosted a black Amtrak employee in the café car while we sat
just west of town during that delay, exclaiming in a thick Southern accent that
“everything’s wrong” while begging to be let off the train so she could drive
to Birmingham, the next stop, for her afternoon religious service.
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| Greyhound buses in Birmingham, AL, as seen from Amtrak's Crescent train. (Photo by me) |
In the
spring of 1961, a lot was wrong in Anniston.
Six
years earlier, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling banning racial
segregation on intercity transit, but had done nothing to enforce the ruling.
So, the Freedom Riders – a mixed-race group of civil rights activists – took matters
into their own hands, choosing
their seats for a DC-to-New Orleans bus trip paralleling the Crescent route
of today.
On
Mother’s Day, a Greyhound with Freedom Riders aboard pulled into Anniston, the
first of two passenger-desegregated buses heading into Alabama that day.
However, a Ku Klux Klan mob – some members of which were clad in attire they had
worn to religious services earlier that Sunday – attacked the bus during its
stop at the downtown terminal, slashing its tires. Police, operating in
collusion with the KKK, did little to restore order.
The
bus made a quick departure, but only made it a few miles west of town before
the Klan-inflicted damage rendered it disabled. The KKK mob, which has followed
in pursuit, attempted to burn the bus with the riders trapped inside, then
brutally beat them once they escaped. The riders made it to a local hospital,
but received only minimal care as the mob surrounded the medical facilities. Allies from
Birmingham had to come and rescue them, using a fleet of vehicles.
Freedom
Riders aboard the second bus, which operated as part of the then-Greyhound
competitor Trailways Transportation System, faced
similar terror during their Anniston stop. Klansmen boarded, beat the riders to
near unconsciousness, and dragged them to the back of the bus. The bus then
continued to Birmingham, where upon arrival an even larger mob proceeded to beat
the passengers with bats, pipes, and chains.
Despite
the violence people aboard those first desegregated buses faced, Freedom Rides
would continue for months. Later that year, the movement would catalyze a major
Civil Rights accomplishment: full, enforced racial integration of intercity
public transportation in the South.
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| Amtrak's Crescent passes wetlands near Lake Pontchartrain. (Photo by me) |
58
years later, the Crescent would not be delayed in Anniston on this day. After a
stop at the station – which now doubles as the town’s Greyhound terminal – that
seemed shorter than the length of time it takes for the doors
to open on a WMATA 7000-series train, the whistle sounded and we were on
our way to Birmingham. (The downtown bus terminal at which the Freedom Riders
were attacked still stands, preserved as part of a national monument President
Obama established.)
Shortly
thereafter, I would – by the type of happenstance that can only happen in an
Amtrak dining car – have lunch with Chef Madison Butler, the Rail Passengers’
Association intern spending
the summer on a food-inspired cross-country
rail trip, during her ride from Atlanta to Meridian, MS. That evening, stunning
views of Lake Pontchartrain welcomed us into New Orleans, an hour behind the
published schedule but on time for dinner at Acme Oyster House and a night of
live music on Frenchmen Street.
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| A Lyft car at the front of a line of stopped vehicles near Frenchmen Street in New Orleans. (Photo by me) |
I would
encounter a spontaneous outdoor brass-band performance, on a street congested
with ride-hailing vehicles. The chaos served as a reminder that the current state
of mobility in New Orleans represents
some of U.S. transportation policy’s greatest shortcomings – substantial
funding went into construction of the short-line, mixed-traffic Loyola-Rampart
Streetcar, but bus service levels remain approximately half what they were
prior to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
But
on the other side of the globe, in a city-state that those of us trying to make it
easier for people to get around places like New Orleans are infatuated with, a
scene bearing eerie similarities to the KKK’s attacks on the Freedom Riders was
playing out in a subway station.
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| Handmade signs implore drivers in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods during Hurricane Katrina, to slow down. Though 14 years have passed since the storm, the city has restored just half of its bus service. (Photo by me) |
Hong
Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is one of the world’s best transit systems.
The city’s Rail
+ Property Model has both allowed the Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed MTR
Corporation to reinvest economic benefits the system provides city residents
and businesses into further transit improvements, while also integrating
stations and their surrounding neighborhoods so effectively that the system
operates profitably. MTR has garnered such respect that transit providers from Sweden
to Australia have contracted
their operations to them.
On
July 21, 2019, however, MTR’s Yuen Long Station looked a lot like Anniston’s bus
terminal did on Mother’s Day 1961.
That
day, hundreds of thousands of people had ridden MTR trains to attend the latest
in a series of large protests against what they see as increasingly
authoritarian behavior by the mainland Chinese government. Much like the
Women’s Marches in U.S. cities the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration and
the demonstrations in Seoul that catalyzed the impeachment of former South
Korean president Park Geun-Hye, transit’s efficiency helped make Hong Kong’s
massive gathering happen.
But
after the rally, a white-clothed pro-China mob attacked
riders aboard a packed train stopped at Yuen Long. Using metal and wooden rods, the mob did not
just attack people headed home from the protest, but beat those aboard
indiscriminately. They injured people commuting home from late-evening work
shifts, and even a pregnant woman.
Police
did not arrive until a half hour after the attack, which an organized crime
group carried out. Though local officials stated that the ongoing
demonstrations had strained law enforcement resources, activists saw the slow
response as evidence that those in charge knowingly allowed the mob violence to
happen, much as Anniston authorities conspired with the KKK to terrorize the
Freedom Riders.
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| A New York City Transit bus at New Flyer of America's Anniston, AL factory. (Photo by me) |
From
Alabama towns to Asian megacities, public transportation gives people freedom
of mobility. And in both, oppressive forces have resorted to violence against
transit riders. The attackers in Hong Kong and Anniston had the same goal: to restrict
the public’s freedom and spread fear.
Historically,
when oppressors try to take on transit riders, they fail. In 1961, the KKK’s
terror only steeled the resolve of the Freedom Riders, helping thrust the Civil
Rights Movement into the national spotlight.
MTR
now finds itself in a position comparable to that the American South’s
intercity bus carriers did – a flashpoint of a major social and political
movement. Earlier this week, protesters blocked
train doors during a morning rush hour to express their condemnation of the
attack, leading to crippling delays and bustitutions on the normally impeccable
rail system. There’s also been talk
of a train operators’ strike, which would likely cause even greater service
disruptions.
It
remains to be seen what long-term impact the Hong Kong demonstrations will
have. But one thing is certain: violent mobs won’t scare people away from
riding transit, or from fighting for what they believe in.
