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Photo: Ser Amantio di Nicolao, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Two historic sites preserved to honor the Freedom Riders, civil rights activists who nonviolently protested racial discrimination and were attacked by mobs in 1961. The monument consists of two sites in different parts of Anniston.
The Freedom Riders National Monument is a United States National Monument in Anniston, Alabama. It was established by President Barack Obama in January 2017 in order to preserve and commemorate Freedom Riders who travelled by bus in mixed black/white groups across the Deep South as part of a protest against racial segregation in Jim Crow states.
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Six miles away from the Greyhound station, the bus carrying the riders out of town broke down due to the damage done by the mob. Meanwhile the segregationists had been chasing the bus, and they set fire to it and attacked the escaping passengers. The field where the bus was burned is now marked with a sign.
Where a mob of segregationists and Klansmen attacked Freedom Riders on Sunday, May 14, 1961. The station is not open to the public, but next to it is a mural and information about the event.