In the 1960s, college student activists who staged sit-ins and integrated bus rides relied on support from Fred Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR. He backed Miles College student leader Frank Dukes and his classmates in creating the first Selective Buying Campaign, using economic pressure to force downtown Birmingham department stores to hire Black sales clerks and remove degrading racially discriminatory signs from water fountains and bathrooms. In 1961, when Freedom Riders were attacked in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery after their interstate buses entered Alabama, Shuttlesworth came to their aid. After Diane Nash called him when riders were stranded in Anniston following the burning of their bus by an angry White mob, he sent 15 cars of Bethel guards to bring them to Birmingham for medical care and shelter. He and members of his church also took in riders who arrived on another bus in Birmingham, where Bull Connor allowed an angry White mob time to beat them before police intervened. Shuttlesworth resisted police efforts to arrest the Black and White riders for violating local segregation laws, helped move the seriously wounded out of town, and enabled the others to continue their effort to integrate bus stations across the South. He also went to Montgomery when the riders were attacked there.