When seven injured black and white Freedom Riders refused to move to segregated emergency rooms after arriving at Anniston Memorial Hospital, staff members were faced with a difficult decision: ignore the threats of the mob outside to burn down the hospital and treat the Riders together or refuse to treat the Riders at all. 

It’s May 14, 1961, and Anniston Memorial Hospital, like many hospitals in the South, maintains a strict policy of separate emergency rooms, entrances and wards for blacks and whites. The Riders were suffering from smoke inhalation from a fire bomb tossed into their disabled bus by a mob white extremists. The mob was protesting the arrival of the Riders, who were testing desegregation of public transportation in the South by riding buses. 

Injured, exhausted and a long way from home, the Riders needed help. Defying the threats of the extremists outside, Hospital staff proceeded to treat the Riders and urged them to leave the hospital before more violence occurred. 

Meanwhile Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham arranged for parishioners to travel to Anniston and retrieve the Riders. Fearing for his life, his parishioners refused to let Shuttlesworth make the journey.

Regional Medical Center (RMC) now stands at the former site of Anniston Memorial Hospital.