The Freedom Rides Museum in the old Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery has been selected for a national historic preservation award.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is presenting the award Friday in Spokane, Wash. It recognizes the groups behind the museum: the U.S. General Services Administration, the Alabama Historical Commission, the Greyhound Bus Station Advisory Committee and the U.S. Middle District Court of Alabama.
They worked together to save the old bus station from demolition. It reopened last year as a museum honoring the Freedom Riders. That group set out to integrate Southern bus stations in 1961, but an angry white mob attacked them when they arrived at the Montgomery station.
The bus station is next door to the federal courthouse, where landmark civil rights rulings were handed down.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.