Freedom Train
Each train had its own special red, white and blue paint scheme and its own itinerary and route across the 48 contiguous states, stopping to visitors and displaying Americana and related historical artifacts.
When town officials in Birmingham, Alabama, and Memphis, Tennessee, refused to allow blacks and whites to see the exhibits at the same time, the Freedom Train skipped the planned visits, amid significant controversy.
The first Freedom Train was proposed in April 1946 by Attorney General Tom C. Clark, who believed that Americans had begun taking the principles of liberty for granted in the post-war years.
The Advertising Council planned an assortment of other events to accompany the Train, including messages in radio programs, comic books, and films.
[6] The National Archives supplied the train with key documents, while, as archivist Elizabeth Hamer noted in August 1947, "Hollywood, chiefly, is putting up the capital for this exhibit.
[3] The Train also displayed a letter from Christopher Columbus, the Mayflower Compact, and documents of German and Japanese surrender from World War II.
[12] For women (more often referred to as "girls" or "sisters"), good citizenship was defined in terms of clothing, participation in certain acceptable community activities, and raising children.
According to attendees Mark and Mary Ellen Murphy: "With polite and firm prodding the Marines hurried through as many as 1200 persons an hour, giving each an average of three seconds to look at each exhibit.
As they shuffled through the beige-and-green cars, they listened to regional and patriotic music played over a public address system and to a 'move faster' exhortation by a suave Marine voice which came through the speaker every time a record changed.
The train's official tour end occurred on January 22, 1949 in Washington, D.C., nearly three months after its last public display October 26, 1948, in Havre de Grace, Maryland.
Facing a public relations backlash and seeking to brand the Western Bloc as more free than its counterpart, the Truman administration announced in September 1947 a policy of desegregation for the train, scheduled to depart only two weeks later.
[23][24] In Birmingham, Alabama, protest from public safety commissioner Bull Connor insisted that black and white people would wait for the train in separate lines and take turns entering.
[25] Under pressure, Connors and his colleague James E. Morgan stated: Our segregation law is for the protection of the white and black races in the city, and for the prevention of disorders.
[26]Under pressure and threat of boycott by various organizations including the NAACP, the American Heritage Foundation also canceled the Freedom Train's appearance in Birmingham.
[27][28] The episode was somewhat embarrassing for collaborationist local black leaders Ernest Taggart and I. J. Israel, who defended their support of the segregated Freedom Train visit in the spirit of compromise.
The Sunday Oregonian published a two-page section titled "No Premium Fares on Freedom Train—But Actually Some Citizens Still Ride Second Class", detailing persistent discrimination and violence against Black Americans.
Due to light rail loadings and track conditions on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, diesels hauled the American Freedom Train from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama.
They carried more than 500 treasures of Americana, including George Washington's copy of the Constitution, the original Louisiana Purchase, Judy Garland's dress from The Wizard of Oz, Joe Frazier's boxing trunks, Martin Luther King Jr.'s pulpit and robes, replicas of Jesse Owens's four Olympic gold medals from 1936[33] (one of which was stolen somewhere along the way), a pair of Wilt Chamberlain's basketball shoes, and a rock from the Moon.
