Photos of American Nazis driving a ‘hate bus’ through the Deep South, following Freedom Riders

The world’s most despicable road trip

Members of the American Nazi Party, including driver John Patler (second from left), pose with their “hate bus” in in Montgomery, Alabama, en route to New Orleans in May 1961. (Joe Scherschel/Life)

American fascists are unfortunately good at getting people’s attention. Our current trash fire of a national discourse proves that. Along with shiny boots and silly haircuts, provocation has long been the purview of the democratically disinclined, be it via social media rants or public displays of intimidation. In 1961, the newly created American Nazi Party devised a timely vehicle for instigation familiar to the left-leaning hippies of the time—just not based on love. They called it the “Hate Bus,” and it was packed tight with resentment.

Led by party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, this caravan of un-merry pranksters planned to traverse the South harassing Freedom Riders and spreading an anti-miscegenation message. The decorated exterior of their blue-and-white Volkswagen read, “Lincoln Rockwell’s Hate Bus: we do hate race mixing, we hate Jew-communism.”

(Joe Scherschel/Life)

But all would not go as planned for these Aryan ambassadors. Upon arriving in New Orleans on May 23, 1961, the hate bus was immediately tailed by local police intent on stopping the Nazis’ planned picket of a theater screening the 1960 Zionist epic, Exodus. All 10 of the haters were arrested and jailed for criminal mischief. Their bus was later impounded by the FBI.

Rockwell, whose party was founded with the aim to “aggravate them so bad . . . that they will have to notice us,” wasn’t just pissing off liberal activists and Holocaust survivors. Six years after his trip to Louisiana, Rockwell was assassinated in the parking lot of an Arlington laundromat. The gunman was John Patler, a disgruntled subordinate and the former driver of the hate bus.

(Joe Scherschel/Life)

(Joe Scherschel/Life)

(Joe Scherschel/Life)

George Lincoln Rockwell (far right) with American Nazi party members, including assassin-to-be John Patler (kneeling, left), and their Volkswagen hate bus in Virginia, 1961. (Bettmann Archive via Getty Images)

Law enforcement keeps an eye on the hate bus as it passes through Montgomery, Alabama, en route to New Orleans in May, 1961. (Joe Scherschel/Life)

American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell carries anti-Semitic placards while picketing in Dallas in 1966. (AP/Fred Kaufman)

(left) George Lincoln Rockwell is booked at a New Orleans police station after being arrested with nine of his followers in May, 1961. (Historical Times) | (right) American Nazi Party members in white prison uniforms are loaded into a police wagon in New Orleans on May 25, 1961, for transfer from a district station to parish prison, where they will await trial on state charges of disturbing the peace. (AP)

George Lincoln Rockwell, commander of the American Nazi Party, addresses a rally in Chicago on August 21, 1966. (AP/Charles Knoblock)

Two bullet holes puncture the windshield of the car where George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated by a disgruntled American Nazi subordinate in Arlington, Virginia, on August 25, 1967. (AP)

This article is part of our White Terror U.S.A. collection, covering the shameful history of white supremacy in America.

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