President Obama Creates Two New Civil Rights National Monuments
President Barack Obama on this day created two new civil rights national monuments.
The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, in Birmingham, Alabama, honors and protects the A.G. Gaston Motel, which served as the headquarters for Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaign in the city during the spring of 1963. Birmingham was notorious for its history of bombings attacking African American leaders, including the infamous bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963 which killed four young African American girls. Even earlier, Birmingham had acquired the nickname “Bombingham.”
The Freedom Riders National Monument, in Anniston, Alabama, honors and protects the Greyhound Bus station in the city where the racially mixed group of Freedom Riders, traveling through the deep south, were brutally attacked by a racist mob. The famous Freedom Ride began on May 4, 1961. (An earlier Freedom Ride, the “Journey of Reconciliation” had begun on April 9, 1947.) In the 1961 Freedom Ride racists attacked one of the buses in Anniston, Alabama, savagely beat some of the Freedom Riders, and set the bus on fire.
In 2020 an enormous national controversy arose over the monuments for leading Confederates during the Civil War. The monuments included statues, the names of U.S. military bases, the names of parks and high schools, and other recognitions. Some statues were torn down by civil rights protesters in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020. The Pentagon, cities and colleges and universities began debating which monuments should be removed, and if so where they should be relocated to, and what new names be given to military bases and other buildings that should be renamed. President Donald Trump was essentially alone as a national leader who supported keeping the memorials to Confederates.
Learn more about the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument.
Read about the A.G. Gaston Motel in President Obama’s Proclamation.
Learn more about the Freedom Riders National Monument.