New exhibit at Alabama monument recalls Freedom Riders
May 8, 2021 GMT
ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) A new exhibit at the recently opened Freedom Riders National Monument will recall the experiences of the people who traveled the South in buses 60 years ago to test racial segregation.
The exhibition, called “Freedom Riders,” will open on Saturday at the monument, located at the old bus station in Anniston, where Freedom Riders were stopped during their journey in 1961 and attacked by a white mob.
The new exhibit, funded with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, includes news coverage and photographs from the Freedom Rides, according to a statement from the National Park Service, which operates the monument. It was put together by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and PBS’s history series, “American Experience.”
Anniston Greyhound Bus Depot Hosting Traveling Exhibit Celebrating 60th Anniversary of Freedom Rides courierjournal.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from courierjournal.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Freedom Riders National Monument opening in Anniston
April 3, 2021
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ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) The old Greyhound bus depot in Anniston is opening for the first time as the Freedom Riders National Monument four years after it was established.
The National Park Service said a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution will be on display as the attraction holds its inaugural opening for visitors on Saturday. The display is about the Poor People s Campaign that drew thousands of people to Washington, D.C., in 1968.
Located about 65 miles east of Birmingham, the monument recognizes the story of activists who set out as “Freedom Riders” six decades ago to test continuing racial segregation and public accommodations on interstate bus lines.
In 1961, the story of the Freedom Riders captured the American imagination: young, mostly white Northern students teaming up with Southern, mostly black civil-rights activists to stage acts of civil disobedience by simply riding together on segregated buses.
Traveling through the South in Integrated groups, the activists faced violence and arrests, followed by weeks-long stays in prisons, often under abusive conditions. Those circumstances, and their courage in facing them, brought a powerful new wave of attention to racial injustice, and served as a catalyst for major new civil-rights initiatives.
Among the Freedom Riders imprisoned was Rabbi Philip Posner, then a seminary student in California.
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