The Freedom Riders' bus burns outside Anniston, Alabama, in 1961/NPS
President Obama moved Thursday to preserve three chapters of American history by designating national monuments to tell the nation's Civil Rights and Reconstruction stories.
The three -- Reconstruction Era National Monument, Freedom Riders National Monument, and Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument -- build on the Obama administration’s commitment to protecting places that are culturally and historically significant and that reflect the story of all Americans, an Interior Department release said.
“African-American history is American history and these monuments are testament to the people and places on the front-lines of our entire nation’s march toward a more perfect union,” said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. “Now the National Park Service, America’s storyteller, will forever be responsible for safeguarding the narrative of not only the sparks that ignited the Civil Rights movement but also the hope of the Reconstruction Era, which for far too long, has been neglected from our national conscience. Current and future generations of Americans will benefit from learning about our painful past and can find inspiration to shape a brighter future.”
Acting Director of the National Park Service Michael T. Reynolds said, “These new national monuments are examples of public, private and philanthropic partnerships working toward a common goal to expand the American narrative we care for, support and share with park visitors. The cities of Birmingham and Anniston and Calhoun County in Alabama, Penn Center, Inc., the Brick Baptist Church, and private citizens in South Carolina, have donated interests in their property to the American people for inclusion in a national park unit for the benefit of all.
"In addition, the U.S. Navy has agreed to include historically significant portions of their lands in Port Royal, South Carolina, in the Reconstruction national monument. We look forward to working with everyone to develop the management plans for these sites, getting them open for visitors, and communicating their stories broadly.”
Meetings with local citizens, local leaders, philanthropic groups, local and statewide elected leaders and members of Congress preceded President Obama’s actions Thursday. Secretary Jewell and former Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis visited the Alabama sites for tours and public meetings in October and Jarvis visited Beaufort County for tours and a public meeting in December.
“The events in Birmingham opened our eyes to the plight of so many African Americans facing discrimination in the South, and ultimately led to the abolition of segregation laws," said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association. "Places like the 16th Street Baptist Church and Kelly Ingram Park were pivotal in the struggle for civil rights, and are truly deserving of national park status. These important places should be protected and their stories told. And no group is better suited to do this than the National Park Service."
The president also expanded two other national monuments managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southwestern Oregon and the California Coastal National Monument.
Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort County, South Carolina
The Reconstruction Era began during the Civil War and lasted until the dawn of Jim Crow racial segregation in the 1890s. It remains one of the most complicated and poorly understood periods in American History. During Reconstruction, four million African Americans, newly freed from bondage, sought to integrate themselves into free society, into the educational, economic, and political life of the country. This began in late 1861 in Beaufort County, S.C., after Union forces won the Battle at Port Royal Sound and brought the ‘Lowcountry’ along the South Carolina coast under Union control. More than 10,000 slaves remained there when their owners fled the cotton and rice plantations. The then-Lincoln Administration decided to initiate the ‘Port Royal Experiment’ in Beaufort County to help the former slaves become self-sufficient.
The Reconstruction Era National Monument includes four sites in Beaufort County:
- Darrah Hall and Brick Baptist Church, within Penn School National Historic Landmark District on St. Helena Island, that includes the site of one of the country’s first schools for freed slaves and a church built by slaves for their owners in 1855 and then turned over to the former slaves in 1862 when their owners left the area.
- The Camp Saxton Site, on U.S. Navy property in Port Royal, where some of the first African Americans joined the U.S. Army, and the site where elaborate ceremonies were held on New Year’s Day 1863 to announce and celebrate the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
- The Old Beaufort Firehouse, an historic building located in the midst of historic downtown Beaufort within walking distance of dozens more historic Reconstruction properties.
The Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston, Alabama
On Mother’s Day 1961, a Freedom Riders bus was attacked at the Greyhound Bus Station in Anniston and was attacked again and burned just six miles out of town adjacent to Route 202. The Freedom Riders remained on board the bus at the station in Anniston while a mob struck with bats and pipes and slashed the bus tires. As the bus moved away from the station and out of town, the mob, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, followed. When the bus broke down, the mob resumed terrorizing the Freedom Riders. The bus was firebombed and members of the mob tried holding the doors shut to trap the Freedom Riders inside. Eventually the Freedom Riders were able to make it off the burning bus but continued to be harassed until Alabama State Troopers dispersed the crowd.
The Freedom Riders were a group of civil rights activists, both African American and Caucasian, who tested integration laws on the interstate bus system. The incident in Anniston was quickly reported in newspapers and shown on television screens across the country, shocking the nation and inspiring more people to join the fight against the injustices of Jim Crow laws in the American South.
The Freedom Riders National Monument includes the former Greyhound Bus Station in Anniston and the bus burning site in Calhoun County six miles out of town.
The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
In 1963, Birmingham was the epicenter of the American Civil Rights Movement. Activists like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Sr., and countless unnamed heroes gathered there to demand equality for all people. The activists planned the nonviolent marches and protests of the Project C (for Confrontation), or Birmingham campaign.
When Dr. King, was jailed for participating in marches through Birmingham, he wrote the famous April 16, 1963, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, declaring ‘I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.’ The events that took place in Birmingham in 1963 became a galvanizing force for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument includes the A.G. Gaston Motel, the headquarters for Project C, where Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy and Shuttlesworth stayed and held strategy sessions and meetings during the Birmingham campaign. They also staged marches, were served a subpoena, and held press conferences on the premises. Dr. King and his colleagues announced the negotiated resolution of the campaign in the motel courtyard on May 10, 1963. Hours later, a bomb exploded near the suite where Dr. King had stayed.
Other landmarks of the American Civil Rights Movement are within walking distance or a short drive from the A.G. Gaston Motel:
- 16th Street Baptist Church, target of September 1963 bombing that killed four young girls who were attending a Bible study.
- Kelly Ingram Park, where protesters, including many children, were violently disrupted by police dogs and powerful water cannons, as caught on camera and broadcast widely by the news media.
- 4th Avenue Historic District sites, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, as the retail and entertainment center for black-owned businesses serving African American customers during Birmingham's extended period of forced segregation.
- Bethel Baptist Church, located six miles north of the city center, noted for its significant association with Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. It was the historical headquarters of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights led by Shuttlesworth and was bombed three times – in 1956, 1958 and 1962.
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a cultural and educational research center opened in 1992, and potential NPS partner already reaching more than 140,000 annual visitors.
The National Park Service will now work with local citizens, historic society groups, and the public generally to develop management plans for all three new national monuments and prepare them for visitors. Please check the websites for these monuments to see what is open to the public over time. The Alabama and Beaufort County sites bring to 417 the number of parks in the National Park System.
Comments
Do you have evidence they didn't? I was there when Nixon froze hiring a few weeks before we needed seasonals to open our parks. I was there when we were told that Reagan had cut funding. And we all remember President Cheney.
And from today's Salt Lake Tribune: http://www.sltrib.com/news/4813918-155/hatch-prods-interior-nominee-to-help
The Outdoor Retailers' Convention threatens to stop bringing several million dollars annually to Utah because of the legislature's anti-public lands policies: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/4813970-155/bagley-cartoon-utahs-official-...
Perhaps, rather than revisiting history or casting political blame, working on a solution that both major political parties would accept would be time better spent. Naive in thinking it could be sold to Congress, maybe, but it would be proactive, no?
Ah, once again the old prove a negative tactic.
The President doesn't control funding - Congress does. You were told wrong. All funding bills originate from the House. The Dems controlled the House the entire Reagan administration.
Yes Kurt, a common solution would be good. I think both parties would be ameniable to increased funding of the parks. The question is where does that funding coming from? Higher taxes or lower spending in other areas. That is where we lose the common ground.
I know that history is a Debbie Downer, but here comes the Debbie Downer. NEITHER political party has been that great for national parks. On that score, I have to agree with Harry and EC. Why the rush for so many national monuments? Well, we historians will be answering that question for a good many years to come, but here is a hint. President Obama is playing catch-up for his own eight lackluster years in office, much as George W. Bush did in 2008, when HE finished setting aside 218,793,600 million acres of national monuments. Obama just hit 550,745,894 acres.
In other words, they're setting aside the world, now waters and islands, too. Harry is right to be suspicious of their motives, forgetting party labels and disgruntled Hillaryites. But this much historians can say with authority, again, that neither party has stood by our public lands with the convictions we express here on The Traveler.
Will Donald Trump be any different? Probably not, but it won't be just because he is a Republican, which is what Mr. Obama would like you to believe. Waving the Bloody Shirt is so much easier than governing, leading, thinking. Which is why historians keep tearing their hair out asking their students to read. Readers of history would not be surprised by any of this, nor so quick to blame the "other" party.
Look in the mirror. There's your answer. Unfortunately, this will probably be the end of the Antiquities Act, too, which will no longer be there when a president really needs it.
The largest amount of our tax dollars goes to the Department of Defense. The only agency that has never submitted an audit of its spending. Perhaps that would be a good place to start looking.
There is an upcoming PBS program about the crisis in our parks. That should be mandatory viewing for everyone who values our parks.
As for trying to convince the Utah Congressional delegation to increase funding for our parks --- lotsa luck with that.
Probably the best place to start would be to return to the kind of public service TV and print media ads and articles that were so effective in the 1960's and 1970's that led directly to the first Earth Day; the Clean Air and Water Acts; and similar advancements in conservation and better stewardship of our lands. (Which, unfortunately, have been allowed to fade from public consciousness.)
We'll have a story Sunday that examines a good part of the money problem the NPS faces.
Kurt, a good point. Common ground historically has been a major sponsor. Grand Canyon (1908) the Santa Fe Railway. Jackson Hole (1943) John D. Rockefeller, Jr. And so on for most of the bigger national monuments that wound up becoming parks. Some influential individual, group, corporation, etc., was behind the designation, so Congress allowed it to stand. Or, in the case of Jackson Hole, could not override the president's veto.
Rather than keep bashing the Utah delegation--a favorite sport on the page's here--let's remember what is really happening when any delegation"appears" to be opposed. They are playing to what they believe is their constituency, nor does it extend much beyond the state of Utah. My delegation, with the exception of one or two, would never vote to abolish the Antiquities Act.
Utah is in a bubble. Why believe the bubble? But yes, national monuments need influential sponsors, and when they are lacking, the monuments appear forced, or worse, contrived. What worries me is this rush to find "significance" in everything the country has been, is, or does. Civil rights? Why can't the states do that? LGBTQ? Again, why not the states? California has 271 state parks. Why not one on gay rights in San Francisco, for example?
Because--and this has always been the big because--the states want the federal government to pay the bill. And take the heat, if something is controversial. It's political science 101, and certainly not rocket science by any means. Mather faced it from the beginning, too, and so founded the state parks movement in the early 1920s.
Who benefits? Who pays? That's American politics. If you want common ground, you start with that. Idealism is out the window, at least, the brand of it we used to have a century ago.
I would say, calming down the Utah delegation, to remind them of the cash cows they have--and will have. A coal mine eventually runs out. An oil well, too. But a national park can be forever.
A century ago, that's what they were saying at the fourth--and last--of the great national parks conferences held by the Interior Department (1911, 1912, 1915, 1917). How about The Traveler asking Mr. Trump to hold a fifth sometime in the next four years? Jon Jarvis might have held one, but no, he had to spend his money on beer. Or was it Disneyland? I forget.
We need to know who our friends are again, that is, who really are our friends. A century ago, it was the railroads--and they stuck with us through thick and thin. Who is it now? Who are the sponsors who can give the national monuments a deeper legitimacy?
As Santa said, he's making his list and checking it twice. We need to know again not just who is naughty, but who is nice.
The largest amount of our tax dollars goes to the Department of Defense.
Actually, a far greater percent goes to entitilements, they just don't fall under a single Department. Further, defense is a Constitutionally mandated authority/power. Entitlements are not. Could there be improvements how the Defense money is spent. Absolutely, but pork barrelling defense dollars too is a bipartisan issue. Further, we defense spending at near record lows (as % of all spending) and entitlements at near highs, I don't think defense should be the target for cuts. But you make my point. While we would both like to see higher spending for the parks, you would rather be handing out Obama phones and food stamps while I would like to protect our country. In the words of Thomas Sowell, we have a "conflict of visions"