When he arrived at the clinic fifteen minutes later, Tom found Viola in the surgery with her brother and a huge young man named Luther Davis. Both men had been beaten with two-by-fours, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Jimmy Revels had been stabbed in the back, and Davis had slashing knife wounds on his arms. The pair had been ambushed by Klansmen outside the Flyway Drive-In between Vidalia and Ferriday, Louisiana. The Flyway was an all-white place, though colored patrons could walk up to the back window and buy a Coke or some french fries if they kept their heads down. Apparently, Jimmy and Luther had pulled into a regular bay and ordered milk shakes like white customers. This created confusion at first, until a pickup truck carrying two Ku Klux Klansmen arrived. The unmasked men got out carrying wooden staves, and everybody had expected a beating, but then Davis had driven his Pontiac convertible over the concrete curb and managed to escape.

The pickup chased Luther’s Pontiac for more than a mile, until a second car cut them off near Pelham’s lumberyard. With no avenue of escape, Revels had gotten out and tried to reason with their pursuers, but this only earned him a green-stick fracture of his right humerus. Then Luther Davis joined the fray. Luther in a fight was more than most men could handle, even with odds of five against two. He’d done serious damage to their assailants, but eventually superior numbers took their toll. Realizing that he and Jimmy might die beside the road, Luther had fought his way back to the Pontiac and retrieved a .25-caliber pistol from the glove box. He told Tom he’d tried to intimidate the Klansmen into stopping the beating, but one had made him use the gun. Luther shot one man in the leg, then dragged Jimmy’s bleeding body back to the car and made their getaway. Only then had Jimmy realized he’d been stabbed in the back.