Click image to enlarge. Montgomery's Greyhound Bus Terminal is one of those ordinary buildings that has been "rendered extraordinary" by the events that occurred within it. On May 20, 1961, twenty-one young Freedom Riders, hoping to end discrimination in the interstate transportation system, pulled into the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Montgomery and were met by an angry mob. The riot that ensued prodded the Kennedy Administration along the road to civil rights reform and signaled the country that there was no turning back for either side (both for segregationists and civil rights advocates) on the issue of civil rights.
Long-range plans for the expansion of the federal government complex immediately to the north of the bus station call for demolition of this structure. Surely a way can be found for adaptive incorporation of the bus station, or at least the core of it, into the overall design of the federal complex, with the present waiting room perhaps being given over to a permanent photographic and artifact exhibit on the civil rights movement in Montgomery and the Deep South.
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