Freedom Riders National Monument!

What Is Freedom Riders National Monument?

Freedom Riders National Monument preserves two historic bus depots and the site of a bus burning in Anniston, Alabama!

What Makes It Historical?

This is a tale of two buses in 1961, one a Greyhound and one a Trailways, both bound for Birmingham, Alabama, both stopping over in Anniston. Aboard each bus were members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), also known as Freedom Riders. Their mission was to poke holes in Jim Crow laws and test the strength of the 1960 Supreme Court case, Boynton vs. Virginia, which ruled that local segregation laws could not disrupt interstate commerce!

There were 13 original CORE members, 7 African-American and 6 Caucasian, who set off in a Greyhound bus from Washington, DC on May 4, 1967. Their goal was to reach New Orleans by May 17, the seventh anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling, but it would not be an easy journey. Two were attacked in Rock Hill, SC for entering a whites-only area, prompting the group to split into two buses when they reached Atlanta.

The worst violence kicked in when these buses reached Anniston, Alabama on May 14. A mob of 200 white segregationists slashed the Greyhound bus’ tires and broke windows, forcing the driver to keep rolling out of town! A segment of the mob then beat their way onto the Trailways bus and forced racial separation all the way to Birmingham, where the police didn’t step in because it was Mother’s Day. Meanwhile, the Greyhound bus never made it to Birmingham at all, because the mob followed it out of town, fire-bombed it, and beat the Freedom Riders as they escaped the burning bus!

This group of Freedom Riders ended up flying the rest of the way to New Orleans, despite a bomb threat, but for the first time, images of the violence against the Freedom Riders made international headlines! The ranks of Freedom Riders rose from 13 to 400, and with the petitioning of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, by November 1, 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued new rules banning segregation in interstate travel and granting legal protection to drivers of integrated buses!

How Can I #HelpTheHelpers?

Volunteer at Freedom Riders National Monument!
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