LEGACY

Obama Makes Civil-Rights Sites National Monuments

To “preserve critical chapters of our country’s history.”

President Obama on Thursday designated three sites central to the U.S. civil-rights movement as national monuments. Obama made the proclamations just days before he is scheduled to transfer the executive office to President-elect Donald Trump. The locations recognize the an Alabama site where the Freedom Riders were attacked, the Birmingham church where four black girls were killed in 1963 by a white supremacist’s bomb, and a former school in South Carolina for freed slaves. In a statement released by the White House, Obama said the monuments “preserve critical chapters of our country’s history, from the Civil War to the civil-rights movement.” The sites will now be managed by the National Park Service and receive permanent protection from Congress under the federal Antiquities Act. “These monuments preserve the vibrant history of the Reconstruction Era and its role in redefining freedom,” Obama said. “They tell the important stories of the citizens who helped launch the civil-rights movement in Birmingham and the Freedom Riders, whose bravery raised national awareness of segregation and violence.”