Civil Municipal Magazine Aug 2023

45 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 8 ANNISTON, ALA . women to end American apartheid are memorialized on the site of the tragic 1961 bus-burning and the former Greyhound station in downtown Anniston. Now part of the National Park Service and opened by President Barack Obama some seven years ago, the memorial––located on Gurnee Avenue in downtown Anniston––is dedicated to the Freedom Riders’ achievements in the fight for civil rights. The bus station, along with the Trailways station, is also part of the Anniston Civil Rights and Heritage Trail. The Trailways station marks the location where a second group of Freedom Riders stopped during their journey to Birmingham. Though this bus was not attacked in the same manner as the first (a KKK mob), a group of white men did board the second bus and harass the Freedom Riders on their two-hour journey to Birmingham. Today, visitors may see these sites to honor the Freedom Riders’ influence on the American Civil Rights Movement, as Draper pointed out. “We’re proud to be able to honor the Freedom Riders in this way,” he said. “This is actually the only national monument in the country dedicated solely to the Freedom Riders.” And this September will mark the 60th anniversary of the integration of Anniston’s formerly whites-only library. On Sept. 15, 1963, two black pastors, revs. William B. McClain and Nimrod Q. Reynolds, were attacked by a white mob when they attempted to enter the Anniston City Library. These and other such events, many of them sit-ins and similar protests, helped challenge and change the segregation of public libraries, according to the City of Anniston. Nowadays, of course, the city has