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Contact: Jessica Epperson, 256-499-7209
Freedom Riders National Monument (FRRI) invites you to explore a new exhibition that tells the powerful, harrowing, and inspirational civil rights story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. The traveling exhibit, called Freedom Riders, will open on Saturday, May 8, 2021.
The Freedom Riders had a simple but daring plan: to board buses in small interracial groups to test and challenge segregated facilities in the South. The Freedom Riders endured savage beatings, humiliation, and imprisonment, but ultimately, their brave actions and commitment to nonviolence changed American forever. Freedom Riders explores this little-known chapter in civil rights history and explains how the selfless actions of the Freedom Riders laid the groundwork for some of the most important civil rights legislation in our nation’s history.
Organized by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and PBS’s flagship history series, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, this exhibition combines powerful photography and news coverage of the Rides. A companion to the May 2011 PBS broadcast of the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film Freedom Riders, the exhibition has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Freedom Riders will be on display on weekends from May 8 to May 30 at the historic Anniston Greyhound Bus Depot (1031 Gurnee Avenue). The Anniston Greyhound Bus Depot will also be open to visitors on Friday, May 14, from 8 am to 8 pm, as FRRI commemorates the 1961 attack on Freedom Riders and bus burning. For more information about FRRI’s traveling exhibit schedule, call 256-499-7209 or email frri_information@nps.gov.
Last updated: May 3, 2021