Freedom riders remembered in Anniston

[2 articles]

Freedom riders remembered in Anniston

http://www.myfoxal.com/Global/story.asp?S=13114234

Sep 07, 2010

By Dixon Hayes

ANNISTON,AL -- It's one of Anniston's darkest days ever, and area
officials have big plans to remember it.
2011 marks the 50th anniversary of the May 14, 1961 bus burning,
Anniston's part of the Freedom Rides. It was an effort by protesters
to enforce a Supreme Court ruling desegregating public places like
restaurants and waiting areas. The Washington to New Orleans movement
was met by violence in Anniston--first, when a mob broke windows and
slashed tires of their bus at the Anniston Greyhound station on
Gurnee Avenue, then when the bus was firebombed on Highway 202.
The incident drew national and international attention and outrage,
and found its way into a CBS News documentary anchored by newsman
Howard K. Smith.
Tuesday, officials with Spirit of Anniston and Jacksonville State
University, among others, announced a yearlong series of events to
mark the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders bus burning incident
with a civil rights trail and other activities.
*Plans are underway for a park at the spot of the bus burning. The
five-acre "Freedom Riders Park" will be located near the dead end of
the Old Birmingham Highway and will tell the story in plaques and
even a statue.
*Historic Anniston Star photographs of the crime scene will be on
display at both the Anniston Public Library and the Birmingham Civil
Rights institute. The pictures were long lost until they turned up in
a law office a few years ago, and were donated to the BCRI. The
Anniston Star more recently found two more photographs in its own
archive, including a devastating shot of the bus door.
*The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute will hold a youth leadership
program. Selected high school students will go through the classes,
be taught about the civil rights movement and even encouraged to
share it with others.
*A plaque will mark the mob attack at the old Greyhound station,
which is now the home of Howell Signs.
*Tours will take visitors to various points of interest, like the old
bus station and West 15th Street. It will also alert visitors to a
little-remembered incident where a Trailways bus was attacked that
same day--Mother's Day, 1961--as the Greyhound incident. It happened
at the Trailways station.
Mayor Gene Robinson vowed the city had no interest in "whitewashing"
the 1961 incident, but instead using it as a teachable moment.
Ahmad Ward of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute called the
Anniston bus burning--and the Birmingham beatings--a major turning
point in the civil rights movement.
"This is a very important event, because you had businessmen in
Alabama, very influential people, who saw what happened in Anniston
and in Birmingham and decided that they needed to start moving to get
some things done because it was going to be a black eye for the whole
state," Ward says.

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Spirit of Anniston announces new events to remember Freedom Riders

http://www.myfoxal.com/Global/story.asp?S=13112062

Sep 07, 2010

ANNISTON, AL - The Spirit of Anniston has announced a year-long
string of events commemorating the Freedom Riders bus burning of 1961.

2011 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Greyhound bus burning that
became an international incident.

The Spirit of Anniston has worked on a civil rights trail. Officials
are also planning the creation of a Freedom Riders park at the site
of the burnings on Highway 202.

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