On this day, May 14, in 1961, a bus filled with Freedom Riders was fire-bombed on Mother’s Day near Anniston, Ala. Ten days earlier, 13 people — seven blacks and six whites — left D.C. in two buses to challenge segregated bus facilities in the South.

In Alabama, members of the KKK surrounded a bus and lit it on fire. The gas tank on the bus exploded.