The Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial and the Washington Monument in Washington, DC
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration designated three new national monuments Thursday in honor of the civil rights, the history, as it commemorates the next week, Martin-Luther-King-Jr. Day.
The monuments of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument in Alabama, Freedom Riders to National Monument in Anniston, Alabama, and the reconstruction-Era National Monument in South Carolina.
“President Obama is taking new steps to promote diversity and inclusiveness in our nation’s system of national parks, national forests, monuments and other public lands and waters is increasing,” a White house statement said, adding that the names “the protection of historic sites in Alabama and South Carolina, played an important role in American history, from the civil war to the civil rights movement.”
The naming of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument is also the objective for the protection of the historic A. G. Gaston Motel, which served at one point as the seat of the civil rights campaign of the King, which contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Freedom Riders National Monument includes the Greyhound Bus Station, to test where a racially-integrated bus of the Freedom Riders attempting to repeal the racial segregation was attacked in the spring of 1961.
The new reconstruction-Era National Monument is comprised of four locations in Beaufort County, South Carolina, to honor a community of the liberated, the former slaves in the reconstruction-era South.
The White house says, the protection for the newly designated national monuments are strongly supported by the local authorities, elected representatives and a wide range of actors, including civil rights organizations, environmental justice groups and conservation groups.