A dozen anti-segregation ╥freedom riders╙ arrived here by bus today from Montgomery, Alabama, and were promptly arrested.
The police pounced on them as they walked towards the ╥whites only╙ waiting-room. The group included nine Negro men, a white man, and two Negro girls. They were charged with ╥breach of the peace, disobeying an officer, and attempting to incite a riot.╙
The bus was the first of two which set out from Montgomery, earlier today to carry on the peaceful demonstrations against the colour bar in bus station waiting rooms and refreshment bars.
The freedom riders left Montgomery today under heavy military and police guard. The director of public safety in Alabama, Mr Floyd Mann, said that the bus and its guard vehicles were a ╥moving convoy╙ which the Highway Patrol had orders to escort to the Mississippi state line. Before the bus left, the official in charge of the military police warned the riders that the trip might be dangerous.
Negroes in the group had breakfast at the counter in the bus station, reserved for whites. The manager said that no Negro had ever eaten there. As the bus pulled out, steel-helmeted National Guardsmen ringed the station almost shoulder to shoulder.
A bomb threat preceded the arrival of the second bus at Meridian, just over the State line in Mississippi. General W. P. Wilson, the State╒s Attorney-General, said that a report had been received that a stick of dynamite would be hurled into the bus when it stopped at the State line to allow for the transfer of Alabama and Mississippi National Guardsmen.
But the bus did not stop. It passed straight through Meridian, where the terminal was surrounded by armed National Guards and many armed city police.
Negro leaders said the groups of ╥freedom riders╙ were arriving by plane and car to join the movement. A new group ╤ three Negroes and four white faculty members of Yale and Wesleyan universities ╤ were reported on their way to Montgomery from Atlanta, Georgia. They boarded a bus found for Montgomery today and said they intended to continue through the South into New Orleans.
