Beyond the Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution in a Southern Town [Hardcover]

Phil Noble (Author), Nan Woodruff (Introduction), William B. McClain (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2003

Anniston, Alabama, is a small industrial city between Birmingham and Atlanta. In 1961, the city's potential for race-related violence was graphically revealed when the KKK firebombed a Freedom Riders bus. In response to that incident a few black and white leaders in Anniston took a progressive view that desegregation was inevitable and that it was better to unite a community than to divide it. To that end, the city created a biracial Human Relations Commission which set about to quietly dismantle Jim Crow segregation laws and customs. This was such a novel notion in George Wallace's Alabama that President Kennedy called with congratulations. The Commission did not prevent all disorder in Anniston -- there was one death and the usual threats, crossburnings, and a widely publicized beating of two black ministers -- yet Anniston was spared much of the civil rights bitterness that raged in other places in the turbulent mid-sixties. Author Phil Noble's account is carefully researched but told from a personal viewpoint. It shows once again that the civil rights movement was not monolithic either for those who were in it or those who were opposed to it.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The Reverend J Phillips Noble is a Mississippi native and a retired Presbyterian minister. He has pastored churches in South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia, and was minister of First Presbyterian Church in Anniston from 1958 - 1965. He now lives in Atlanta where he is minister to the ministers of the Atlanta Presbytery.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: NewSouth Books (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158838120X
• ISBN-13: 978-1588381200
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,313,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond the Burning Bus, March 1, 2004

By 

Martha Hay Vardeman,PhD (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution in a Southern Town (Hardcover)

Having been a professor of Race Relations and Minority Peoples at an African-American College during the Civil Rights Movement,
I was thrilled to read Beyond the Burning Bus and to learn how three ministers in Anniston, Alabama--one White and two Blacks--came together after the Bus Burning during the Freedom Rides and the miracles they were able to accomplish. In spite of threats and beatings, they were able to win the cooperation of leaders of both races. Through the first, if not only, mayor appointed Human Relations Council, the city of Anniston was desegregated. This is a heart warming story of the kind of courage and determination to work for better relationships that we still need in our society 40 years later.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond the Burning Bus, February 29, 2004

By 

Burt Vardeman (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution in a Southern Town (Hardcover)

I was living in Alabama as a young adult during the times about which Dr. Phil Noble writes. I kept in close touch with the hapenings regarding those events and remember them quite vividly.
Dr. Noble's recount of those events is exceedingly accurate, and he has succeeded so well in causing the reader to feel and experience the tension and fear of those terrible events.
He, also, gives behind the scenes workings of persons of good will who put their lives, and the lives of families, at risk in taking bold steps and actions to prevent a fine Southern community from exploding in what could have become a major racial riot.
I recommend this book for the reading of any age person, but I hope adults will encourage their youth to read this account of an important event in the life of this country.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A joyous reflection on the pain of the South in the 60's, December 20, 2003

By 

jack ward (atlanta, ga) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution in a Southern Town (Hardcover)

In "Beyond the Burning Bus", Phil Noble has helped me past the fear of reflection on the violence and inhumanity which we experienced in the Deep South during the 50's and 60's. Told from his vantage point in the city of Anniston, Alabama, Noble helps us enter the delicate process of harmonizing race relations and establishing trust and confidence between white and black. The humanity and compassion with which this chronicle is laid before us is, in itself, inspiring. Not only a great read, this book should attract today's students and all of us who are interested in the transformation of violence into compassion and healing