[United States Statutes at Large, Volume 131, 115th Congress, 1st Session]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

 
Proclamation 9566 of January 12, 2017

Establishment of the Freedom Riders National Monument

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

An interracial group of ``Freedom Riders'' set out in May 1961 on a
journey from Washington, DC, to New Orleans through the Deep South. In
organizing the 1961 Freedom Rides, the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) was building upon earlier efforts of other civil rights
organizations, including the 1947 ``Journey of Reconciliation,'' an
integrated bus ride through the segregated Upper South. The purpose of
the 1961

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Freedom Rides was to test if bus station facilities in the Deep South
were complying with U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka (1954) had reversed the infamous ``separate but
equal'' doctrine in public education, and Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and
Boynton v. Virginia (1960) had struck down Virginia laws compelling
segregation in interstate travel.
These rulings were the result of successful litigation brought by the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which laid
the groundwork for direct action campaigns by civil rights organizations
like CORE, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). These organizations had
gathered strength, and by the 1950s had launched mass movements that
demonstrated the power of nonviolent protest. At the same time, reaction
to the decision in Brown v. Board of Education had heightened racial
tensions in the country, especially in the Deep South. White Citizens'
Councils, made up of politicians, businessmen, and civic leaders
committed to resisting integration, formed throughout the South. In
1956, over 100 members of Congress signed the ``Southern Manifesto,''
which criticized the Brown decision and called for resistance to its
implementation. This campaign of massive resistance launched by white
segregationists reinforced their determination to assure continued
separation of the races in public spaces.
Against this background, on May 4, 1961, in Washington, DC, eleven
Freedom Riders split into two groups and boarded two buses, a Greyhound
bus and a Trailways bus, bound for New Orleans. The Greyhound bus
carrying the first of these groups left Atlanta, Georgia on Sunday, May
14, and pulled into a Greyhound bus station in Anniston, Alabama later
that day. There, a segregationist mob, including members of the Ku Klux
Klan, violently attacked the Freedom Riders. The attackers threw rocks
at the bus, broke windows, and slashed tires. Belatedly, police officers
arrived and cleared a path, allowing the bus to depart with a long line
of vehicles in pursuit. Two cars pulled ahead of the bus and forced the
bus to slow to a crawl. Six miles outside of town, the bus's slashed
tires gave out and the driver stopped on the shoulder of Highway 202.
There, with the Freedom Riders onboard, one member of the mob threw a
flaming bundle of rags through one of the windows that caused an
explosion seconds later. The Freedom Riders struggled to escape as
members of the mob attempted to trap them inside the burning bus. When
they finally broke free, they received little aid for their injuries.
Later that day, deacons dispatched by Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth of
Birmingham's Bethel Baptist Church rescued the Freedom Riders from the
hostile mob at Anniston Hospital and drove them to Birmingham for
shelter at the church. A freelance photojournalist captured the horrific
scene of the attack in photographs, which appeared on the front pages of
newspapers across America the next day. The brutal portrayal of
segregation in the South shocked many Americans and forced the issue of
racial segregation in interstate travel to the forefront of the American
conscience.
When the Trailways bus, which had departed Atlanta an hour after the
Greyhound bus, arrived in Anniston, the Trailways station was mostly
quiet. A group of Klansmen boarded the bus and forcibly segregated the
Freedom Riders. With all aboard, the bus left on its two-hour trip to
Birmingham during which the Klansmen continued to intimidate and harass
the Freedom Riders. When the Trailways bus arrived in Bir

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mingham, a mob of white men and women attacked the Freedom Riders,
reporters, and bystanders with fists, iron pipes, baseball bats, and
other weapons, while the police department under the charge of
Commissioner of Public Safety T. Eugene ``Bull'' Connor was nowhere to
be seen. After fifteen minutes of violence, the mob retreated and the
police appeared.
Leaders of the Nashville Student Movement, including members of SNCC,
firmly believed that they could not let violence prevail over
nonviolence. They organized an interracial group of volunteers to travel
to Birmingham and resume the Freedom Rides. Under police protection
negotiated with help from the Kennedy Administration, on May 20, these
SNCC Freedom Riders departed Birmingham en route to Montgomery, Alabama,
where an angry white mob viciously attacked them. The next night, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.--who had not been involved in the planning of
the Freedom Rides--joined Reverend Ralph David Abernathy and Reverend
Shuttlesworth at a mass meeting in Abernathy's First Baptist Church in
Montgomery. A white mob gathered outside the church, attacked African
American onlookers, and held hostage the civil rights leaders and
approximately 1,500 attendees inside the church. King remained in
telephone communication with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy while
U.S. marshals attempted to repel the siege. Finally, Governor John
Patterson was forced to declare martial law and send in the National
Guard.
Media coverage of the Freedom Rides inspired many people to take action
and join the effort to end racial inequality. Over the summer of 1961,
the number of Freedom Riders grew to over 400, many of whom were
arrested and jailed for their activism. The Freedom Rides of 1961
focused national attention on Southern segregationists' disregard for
U.S. Supreme Court rulings and the violence that they used to enforce
unconstitutional State and local segregation laws and practices. The
Freedom Rides forced the Federal Government to take steps to ban
segregation in interstate bus travel. On May 29, 1961, Attorney General
Kennedy petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue
regulations banning segregation, and the ICC subsequently decreed that
by November 1, 1961, bus carriers and terminals serving interstate
travel had to be integrated.
As described above, the sites of these events contain objects of
historic interest from a critical period of American history.
WHEREAS, section 320301 of title 54, United States Code (known as the
``Antiquities Act''), authorizes the President, in his discretion, to
declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and
prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific
interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the
Federal Government to be national monuments, and to reserve as a part
thereof parcels of land, the limits of which shall be confined to the
smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the
objects to be protected;
WHEREAS, the City of Anniston has donated to The Conservation Fund fee
title to the former Greyhound bus station building in downtown Anniston,
Alabama, approximately 0.17 acres of land;
WHEREAS, Calhoun County has donated to The Conservation Fund fee title
to the site of the bus burning outside Anniston, Alabama, approximately
5.79 acres of land;

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WHEREAS, The Conservation Fund has relinquished and conveyed all of
these lands to the United States of America;
WHEREAS, it is in the public interest to preserve and protect the
historic objects associated with the former Greyhound bus station in
Anniston, Alabama, and the site of the bus burning outside Anniston in
Calhoun County, Alabama;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of
America, by the authority vested in me by section 320301 of title 54,
United States Code, hereby proclaim the objects identified above that
are situated upon lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by
the Federal Government to be the Freedom Riders National Monument
(monument) and, for the purpose of protecting those objects, reserve as
a part thereof all lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by
the Federal Government within the boundaries described on the
accompanying map, which is attached to and forms a part of this
proclamation. The reserved Federal lands and interests in lands
encompass approximately 5.96 acres. The boundaries described on the
accompanying map are confined to the smallest area compatible with the
proper care and management of the objects to be protected.
All Federal lands and interests in lands within the boundaries described
on the accompanying map are hereby appropriated and withdrawn from all
forms of entry, location, selection, sale, or other disposition under
the public land laws, from location, entry, and patent under the mining
laws, and from disposition under all laws relating to mineral and
geothermal leasing.
The establishment of the monument is subject to valid existing rights.
If the Federal Government acquires any lands or interests in lands not
owned or controlled by the Federal Government within the boundaries
described on the accompanying map, such lands and interests in lands
shall be reserved as a part of the monument, and objects identified
above that are situated upon those lands and interests in lands shall be
part of the monument, upon acquisition of ownership or control by the
Federal Government.
The Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) shall manage the monument
through the National Park Service, pursuant to applicable legal
authorities, consistent with the purposes and provisions of this
proclamation. The Secretary shall use available authorities, as
appropriate, to enter into agreements with others to address common
interests and promote management needs and efficiencies.
The Secretary shall prepare a management plan, with full public
involvement, within 3 years of the date of this proclamation. The
management plan shall ensure that the monument fulfills the following
purposes for the benefit of present and future generations: (1) to
preserve and protect the objects of historic interest associated with
the monument, and (2) to interpret the objects, resources, and values
related to the civil rights movement. The management plan shall, among
other things, set forth the desired relationship of the monument to
other related resources, programs, and organizations, both within and
outside the National Park System.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke any existing
withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation; however, the monument shall
be the dominant reservation.

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Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate,
injure, destroy, or remove any feature of this monument and not to
locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twelfth day of
January, in the year of our Lord two thousand seventeen, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-
first.
BARACK OBAMA

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