Freedom Riders exhibit is the latest to showcase key role of buses in history
The Museum of Bus Transportation unveiled an exhibition honoring the Civil Rights movement’s pioneering Freedom Riders at its annual Nov. 3 meeting, an exhibit that will be showcased through the end of February’s Black History Month.
The Hershey, Pennsylvania, museum is dedicated to preserving the history of the bus industry and to educating the public on the industry’s contributions to the history and fabric of the United States. The museum also prides itself on using its equipment to bring history to life, in this case showcasing in the exhibit two buses that are virtually identical to those ridden through Alabama by the Freedom Riders in 1961.
The unveiling included a moving presentation by W. Peter Conroy, representing the Freedom Riders Park.
Conroy told, in vivid detail, the story of the courageous young reformers who rode Greyhound and Trailways buses through the segregated South. Although the federal government had integrated interstate coaches, the facilities in cities and towns along the routes refused service to African Americans. These civil rights pioneers peacefully protested in the segregated bus stations.
A number were badly beaten, and a Greyhound was set afire near Anniston by local segregationists. Graphic photos of injured Freedom Riders and the burning bus outraged the public, literally and figuratively helping to ignite the Civil Rights Movement nationwide.
Conroy suggested that the audience climb on the display buses, and to imagine how the Freedom Riders must have felt as they began burning while surrounded and rocked by an angry mob of Ku Klux Klansmen.
After escaping the fiery coach, no one offered to help the battered civil rights workers, except for a single 12-year-old white girl who was appalled by their suffering. Janie Miller defied the Klansmen and brought the protestors buckets of water from her family’s nearby store. Her act is memorialized at the Park.
He finished by encouraging the audience to visit Anniston, Alabama, to see the site where the national conscience was aroused and experience how blacks and whites, now unified, have changed the region. The site is the country’s newest national monument.
David Schmidt, the museum’s board chair, noted that previous educational exhibits have included the Buses of the Negro Leagues and those of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which were very popular. This exhibit, he says, builds on that legacy.
“The Civil Rights Movement got its start with Rosa Parks in a transit bus and captured the nation’s attention with the Freedom Rider’s burning Greyhound,” he said. “Now a large portion of the industry is minority owned, and buses have been at the center of history in this country for generations”
The Museum of Bus Transportation has one goal: to preserve historic buses that have contributed to the nation’s growth. Boasting a fleet of more than 35 antique and historic buses, and nationally recognized, the museum occupies a portion of the celebrated AACA Car Museum. In addition to artifacts and model buses, three walls are covered with a “timeline” graphically displaying the history of bus manufacturing in the U.S. This is believed to be the only complete account of a nation’s bus building industry.
An equally important part is helping to educate new generations about the enormous impact the industry—and its people—have had in shaping history, said Mark Szyperski, the museum’s vice chair.
“It’s no accident that the Freedom Riders chose buses to spread their message,” he said. “In the same spirit, our museum membership just elected our first female board members, Elizabeth Deffer and Becky Tollens, both transportation veterans. Although long overdue, this is symbolic of the great progress women and minorities have made in our business.”
For more on the role of buses in history, go to: busmuseum.org. Find the Freedom Riders presentation at: busmuseum.org/events/membership-meeting. The Freedom Riders Park, located about midway between Atlanta and Birmingham, makes a worthy and moving tour stop: freedomriderspark.org.
