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Jerry Pillarelli | profile | all galleries >> Travel and Nature >> US Travel; by Trip, by State >> Alabama >> Freedom Riders National Monument – Alabama tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

Freedom Riders National Monument – Alabama

Images of Freedom Riders National Monument – Eastern Alabama, taken in September 2022.

Established in January of 2017, Freedom Riders National Monument honors an interracial group of Americans who set out to challenge the nations discriminatory interstate travel laws by riding busses across the southern states to make sure that segregation laws, struck down by the Supreme Court, were being complied with in bus station facilities.

On Sunday May 14, 1961 two buses, a Greyhound and a Trailways, each with Freedom riders on board arrived in Anniston Alabama and were met by large mobs of white segregationists and members of the Ku Klux Klan. At the Greyhound station the mob threw rocks, broke windows and slashed tires before the police finally arrived and cleared the way so the bus could depart and then escorted it to the city limits followed by a line of cars belonging to the racist mob. Once the police left the convoy, two cars from the mob slowed the bus which eventually had to stop because of the flat tires. It was on the shoulder of the Old Birmingham Highway where the mob once again attacked the bus to include throwing a flaming bundle of rags in through a broken window. As the rags exploded other members of the mob blocked all exits to try to keep the passengers from escaping. They were able to get out of the burning bus only to be brutally beaten once outside. Over the coming days, the vicious portrayal of segregation in the south was on display in newspapers across the nation and on May 29, 1961 President John F Kennedy directed the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to ban segregation in all transportation facilities.

This is one of a handful of US Park Service parks which draw attention to dark periods in our history. Along with the World War II Japanese internment camps like Manzanar and Minidoka; sites of Native American massacres like Big Hole and Civil War Battlefields like Gettysburg, a strong nation not only needs to remember its mistakes but also take responsibility for them. In the case of the Freedom Riders, it started with a group of thirteen black and white Americans who risked everything to assure freedom for all, and at the hands of racists and white segregationists it almost cost them their lives. So here we also honor individuals who fought for equality for African Americans, not a popular stand at the time but one they knew to be right and just. And as the passage of time often does, it has proven them to be right and their bravery and sacrifice has been documented in our nation’s history.
The Anniston Greyhound bus station where protesters initially stopped the bus in Freedom Riders National Monument
The Anniston Greyhound bus station where protesters initially stopped the bus in Freedom Riders National Monument 		Mural in the driveway of the Greyhound bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument
Mural in the driveway of the Greyhound bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Panel in the Greyhound bus driveway listing the Freedom Riders on the bus attacked by rioters in Freedom Riders NM
Panel in the Greyhound bus driveway listing the Freedom Riders on the bus attacked by rioters in Freedom Riders NM		 Greyhound bus mural and information boards in Freedom Riders National Monument
Greyhound bus mural and information boards in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Station driveway where the Greyhound bus was first attacked by white rioters in Freedom Riders National Monument
Station driveway where the Greyhound bus was first attacked by white rioters in Freedom Riders National Monument
View the Greyhound bus had pulling into the station before the first attack in Freedom Riders National Monument
View the Greyhound bus had pulling into the station before the first attack in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Greyhound bus mural in the station driveway where the racist mob first attacked the bus in Freedom Riders National Monument
Greyhound bus mural in the station driveway where the racist mob first attacked the bus in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Eternal flame honoring the Freedom Riders of May 14, 1961 in Freedom Riders National Monument
Eternal flame honoring the Freedom Riders of May 14, 1961 in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Storefronts across the street from the Greyhound bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument
Storefronts across the street from the Greyhound bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Trailways bus station where riders on a second bus were forcibly segregated in Freedom Riders National Monument
Trailways bus station where riders on a second bus were forcibly segregated in Freedom Riders National Monument
Where the second bus was met by a mob at the Trailways bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument
Where the second bus was met by a mob at the Trailways bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Mural and information panels at the Trailway bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument
Mural and information panels at the Trailway bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Nobile Street in front of the Trailway bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument
Nobile Street in front of the Trailway bus station in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Damaged sign at the site of the Greyhound bus burning site in Freedom Riders National Monument
Damaged sign at the site of the Greyhound bus burning site in Freedom Riders National Monument		 Old Birmingham Highway, site of the Greyhound bus burning, in Freedom Riders National Monument
Old Birmingham Highway, site of the Greyhound bus burning, in Freedom Riders National Monument
Southern Railways Station, site of the 1961 college student attack, along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail
Southern Railways Station, site of the 1961 college student attack, along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail		 Anniston Memorial Hospital where Freedom Riders refused segregated care along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail
Anniston Memorial Hospital where Freedom Riders refused segregated care along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail		 Seventeenth Street Baptist Church where Civil Rights meetings took place along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail
Seventeenth Street Baptist Church where Civil Rights meetings took place along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail		 Library where in 1963 reverends were beaten while trying to desegregate the facility along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail
Library where in 1963 reverends were beaten while trying to desegregate the facility along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail		 West 15th Street Mural Park, African American ‘City within a city’ along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail
West 15th Street Mural Park, African American ‘City within a city’ along the Anniston Civil Rights Trail

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