Anniston High School students learn there’s significant civil rights history in their own backyard

By: Bill Wilson / The Anniston Star

More than 115 Anniston High School students got a history lesson in their own backyard recently when they visited the Freedom Riders National Monument and the former Greyhound bus station to learn about the racist attack on a commercial bus on Mother’s Day 1961.

Both sites are now managed by the National Park Service.

Kevin Chandler, a park ranger with the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument and the Freedom Riders National Monument, spoke next to the large Greyhound bus mural about the violence and fear that marked a Sunday afternoon 63 years ago. A mob of white segregationists attacked the bus carrying mostly college students who were whites and Blacks sitting together on the bus. The bus’s tires were slashed at the bus station, and then, a couple of miles outside of town, the mob attacked the bus again and set it on fire with passengers still inside.

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