Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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

Beyond The Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution In A Southern Town by Presbyterian minister Phil Noble is the riveting story of Anniston, Alabama, a small industrial city, and how it was desegregated in the 1960s. Though there was violence and hatred opposing the end of the city's post-Civil War Jim Crow laws against the backdrop of one death, several cross burnings, as well as the publicized beatings of two black ministers, the social and political chaos was not as bad as it could have been because both black and white community leaders worked together through a biracial Human Relations Council to help their city get through difficult times. Researched meticulously and narrated from a personal point of view, Beyond The Burning Bus offers a unique, informative, and highly recommended microcosm of the civil rights era and the overall positive changes that took place within this typical and representative community in the American south.