<P> In answer to SNCC's call, Freedom Riders from across the Eastern US joined John Lewis and Hank Thomas, the two young SNCC members of the original Ride, who had remained in Birmingham . On May 19, they attempted to resume the ride, but, terrified by the howling mob surrounding the bus depot, the drivers refused . Harassed and besieged by the mob, the riders waited all night for a bus . </P> <P> Under intense public pressure from the Kennedy administration, Greyhound was forced to provide a driver . After direct intervention by Byron White of the Attorney General's office, Alabama Governor John Patterson reluctantly promised to protect the bus from KKK mobs and snipers on the road between Birmingham and Montgomery . On the morning of May 20, the Freedom Ride resumed, with the bus carrying the riders traveling toward Montgomery at 90 miles an hour, protected by a contingent of the Alabama State Highway Patrol . </P> <P> The Highway Patrol abandoned the bus and riders at the Montgomery city limits . At the Montgomery Greyhound station on South Court Street, a white mob awaited . They beat the Freedom Riders with baseball bats and iron pipes . The local police allowed the beatings to go on uninterrupted . Again, white Freedom Riders were singled out for particularly brutal beatings . Reporters and news photographers were attacked first and their cameras destroyed, but one reporter took a photo later of Jim Zwerg in the hospital, showing how he was beaten and bruised . Seigenthaler, a Justice Department official, was beaten and left unconscious lying in the street . Ambulances refused to take the wounded to the hospital . Local black residents rescued them, and a number of the Freedom Riders were hospitalized . </P> <P> On the following night, Sunday, May 21, more than 1500 people packed into Reverend Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church to honor the Freedom Riders . Among the speakers were Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was newly based in Montgomery, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Farmer . Outside, a mob of more than 3,000 white people attacked the black attendees, with a handful of the United States Marshals Service protecting the church from assault and fire bombs . With city and state police making no effort to restore order, the civil rights leaders appealed to the President for protection . President Kennedy threatened the governor to intervene with federal troops if he would not protect the people . Governor Patterson forestalled that by finally ordering the Alabama National Guard to disperse the mob, and the Guard reached the church in the early morning . </P>

Civil rights activists targeted segregation in interstate transportation (1 point)