Atlanta Daily World

No Car Collision Involved
HINTON REVEALS

ABDUCTION FOR

MILITANCY
Forced To Lie On Back
On Floor In Lead Car

BY JOHN H. McCRAY.

COLUMBIA, S. C. - In an exclusive interview here late Friday, James M. Hinton, president of the South Carolina NAACP Conference who had escaped a mob near Augusta, Ga. early that morning, said that his abduction was not the result of his car having been in a collision of any sort.

The abduction, he said, basing his statement on undisclosed information gathered during a brief conversation with the captors, was sorely because of his militant stand for equal educational opportunities for Negroes, and various other civic activities, many of which have been carried out in Georgia.

He was freed in a wooded section about ten miles out of Augusta, in Columbia County, in a cold driving rain clad only in his pajamas and walked back about four miles of the distance before a bus driver, hearing his story, allowed him to ride the rest of the way into the city.

He suffered no bodily harm although his throat was irritated from having had one of the abductor's foot press on it during the ride.

FORCED TO LIE ON BACK.

Mr. Hinton said he had been forced to lie on his back on the floor board of the lead car, with his feet pointed to the ceiling. The man's foot was presumably for the purpose of keeping him down and quiet.

Federal agents were said to be investigating the case and have been given several bits of information, including the license number of one of the cars, which is being carefully guarded.

He returned here around 5 p. m. Friday to receive the welcome of a hero. Streets were lined for two blocks by the neighbors and friends who had spent much of an anxious night and day. Women cried openly and he spent two hours negotiating the final two blocks to his house, working his way through the assemblage of citizens who were glad to have him home.

SEIZED AT BALL HOME

Mr. Hinton was seized at the home of Mrs. Annie Ball, 1499 Wrightsboro Road, in Augusta, the home where he boards while on a special assignment with the Pilgrim Insurance Company, for whom he works, after an unidentified white man asked Mrs. Ball to let him speak with Hinton.

A tan or brown Pontiac car parked at the house.

When the intended victim appeared, he was grabbed bodily and thrown forcibly into the waiting car. He called to a white family across the street which operates a store and these people notified police. Ten minutes later, the alarm was spread, and about the same time, it was flashed on late news broadcasts, which are believed to have scared the would-be-lynchers away from their crime.

GUN DISCOVERY

Another possible factor was that a gun, believed to have been carried by one of the abductors, was dropped in front of the Wrightsboro Road address in the scuffle and was recovered by investigating police officers.

The abduction electrified Columbia and South Carolina, and Augusta throughout the night,

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Forced To Lie
(Continued From Page One)
where many people failed to retire.
Mr. Hinton was rescued at the Augusta bus station by a South Carolinian living in the North Augusta area across the river, who took him to his home.
The NAACP Chieftain, considered one of the nation's topflight battlers for human rights, however, was undaunted by the experience. He plans to continue living at the Augusta address while on the assignment and, his other civic activities, which last year earned him the state's title of "one of two greatest citizens."