The Freedom Train was coming to Portsmouth! It was making a stop at the Norfolk & Western Railroad Station. The red, white, and blue train symbolized the hopes of a nation concerned about the direction American life was taking in the wake of World War II.
After Americans had experienced a decade of pre-war economic Depression and made tremendous sacrifices in foreign lands throughout World War II, they were entering an age of post-war prosperity with opportunities unknown in all of human history. And they were unsure of the reassurances at the sudden dawn of the nuclear age and Soviet expansion into countries just liberated from fascist oppression in Europe and Asia. The train would enable Americans to rediscover for themselves just how hard-won their freedoms were.
The August 5, 1948, Portsmouth Times published a front page article with a headline proclaiming “Throngs To See Freedom Train Friday.” The city was abuzz. And for good reason: a ceremony to open the event would feature Governor Thomas J. Herbert speaking from a special platform at side of train; the 34-piece 158th Army Band from Ft. Knox would be there to entertain and “look snappy in their khaki uniforms with green helmets and leggings”; and the one-of-a-kind, incredible historical exhibit on the train would be open to the general public from 10 A.M. To 10 P.M.
The newspaper anticipated the crowd to visit the train would swell to 20,000. Paul Flohr of the Junior Chamber of Commerce cautioned: “Come early. We don't want to turn anybody away. Onboard one-way traffic, in single file would be the order of the day.
The glorious day arrived. On August 6, 1948, the beautiful, much-anticipated Freedom Train arrived in Portsmouth, Ohio, and the huge celebration commenced.
Mayor Wear spoke briefly to welcome the train to Portsmouth Then he and his wife and three sons – Larry, Scotty, and Tommy – led a party through the train for a preliminary inspection escorted by Walter H.S. O'Brien, the train director.
All manner of public servants were in place to assist. Along the train corridor, Marines in full dress uniform stood guard over the priceless documents while outside city police, naval reservists, and civil air patrolmen helped to keep the waiting line in order and direct traffic around the station.
Chief Hughy Rudity had as many police and traffic patrolmen as he could spare on duty at the depot, and Fire Chief Howard Keibler was on hand with a squad of firemen, ready to offer first aid in case of any mishap.
First in line when the train was opened to public view at 10 A.M. was a party of students and teachers from Rio Grande College. In a steady stream, other spectators followed. The day went along swimmingly without reported incident. The crowds were so big that Martings decided to close at 5 P.M. in order that employees might get to the train before the expected after-supper rush of visitors.
(Anna Linck. “Thousands Visit Freedom Train To View Historical Documents.” Portsmouth Times. August 6, 1948.)
The Freedom Train
With President Harry Truman in the lead, some in the national government believed Americans should pause and reflect, to experience a "rededication" to the principles that founded their country. And, since Truman loved trains (His use of the "whistle stop" campaign train still epitomizes this icon of the electoral process.), Attorney General Tom C. Clark and his staff proposed a train that would travel to communities in every state of the nation, taking with it dozens of "documents of liberty."
Clark proposed the Freedom Train in April 1946, and the idea was adopted by a coalition that included Paramount Pictures and the Advertising Council, which had just changed its name from "War Advertising Council.”
The Freedom Train became a seven-car train that traveled across the United States from September 1947 until January 1949. It was dedicated to the history of American democracy and contained some of the country's most priceless historical documents.
Once onboard at one of many stops, spectators could view important key documents supplied by the National Archives. Originally, Clark had planned for the train to be funded by Congress; however, he was unable to secure appropriated funds for the project. The American Heritage foundation was then created to lead the project. Funding was collected through private donations, corporations, and individuals. Archivist Elizabeth Hamer noted in August 1947, "Hollywood, chiefly, is putting up the capital for this exhibit."
Author Stuart J. Little says, "The National Archives' staff originally compiled documents and produced a wide-ranging and intriguing collection. The staff recommended documents covering women's suffrage, collective bargaining, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802 concerning prohibition of discrimination in the defense industry,
and the National Labor Relations Act. The Foundation was unhappy with the list because they said it “detracts from our objectives.”
In April 1947 the Foundation rejected the Archives' list and gained control of document selection with the creation of the Documents Approval Committee. Contrary to the wishes of the Justice Department, the Foundation excluded collective bargaining from the list of citizens' rights.
In the final roster, the only document pertaining to black history was the Emancipation Proclamation – and even in this case, accompanying commentary focused on the white president Abraham Lincoln who issued the document.
(Stuart J. Little. The Freedom Train: Citizenship and Postwar Political Culture 1946-1949. 1993.)
Historical Note:
The Train displayed exhibits such as "Good Citizen,” which portrayed men wearing suits Exhibits also defined American freedoms in terms of consumerism and boasted of superior commodity production. 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.
Despite the lack of certain “controversial” inclusions, the final selection was impressive – a hundred and twenty-one documents ranged from the Magna Carta to the flag that flew over the U.S.S. Missouri on the day the Japanese surrendered, only two years earlier. In between, there was a heavy emphasis on the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence, and Washington’s handwritten notes on the Constitution. Robert E. Lee was included, in a letter accepting his university presidency, which serenely occupied a panel with his adversary, Abraham Lincoln, who had three documents in all, including the Gettysburg Address and the aforementioned Emancipation Proclamation.
The Advertising Council planned an assortment of other events to accompany the train, including messages in radio programs, comic books, and films. In each city where the train stopped, they organized a "Rededication Week" for public celebrations of the United States.
American Federation of Labor President William Green and Congress of Industrial Organizations President Philip Murray were vice presidents of the Foundation. The Board of Trustees did not include any African-Americans until after the train had launched.
Thomas D'Arcy Brophy (of advertising firm Kenyon & Eckhardt) described the Freedom Train as "a campaign to sell America to Americans.”
American historian, writer, and librarian, Edward "Ted" Ladd Widmer writes in The New Yorker …
“At first blush, these exhibit planners were not natural revolutionaries. They chose the word 'Freedom' because 'Democracy' struck several as too volatile. The foundation’s most prominent Democrat, John W. Davis, had run for President, in 1924, on a segregationist platform. Without a very clear plan, the organizers hoped that the publicity stunt – seven train cars pulled by a two-thousand-horsepower locomotive with the number 1776 on the side – would result in a national 'rededication,' purging 'cynicism' and 'confusion.'”
(Ted Widmer. “Remembering the Freedom Train.” The New Yorker. November 26, 2017.)
To kick off the activities of the foundation and to make the nation aware of the forthcoming Freedom Train tour and program, a White House Conference was held on May 22, 1947. At the conference, Walter Francis White, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as a trustee of the American Heritage Foundation, raised concerns about the contradictions between some of the documents the train would carry and the practice of segregation.
Walter White told the conferees that “merely causing people to look at and to touch the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence is not enough…We have got to plant it so deep in the hearts of all Americans that we can demonstrate to ourselves and to the world that democracy is the best way of life, but we have got to live it as well as talk about it.”
Dr. Greg Bradsher, Senior Archivist at the National Archives at College Park, writes …
“Responding to White’s concerns, Charles E Wilson, president of the General Electric Corporation and the chairman of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights was most insistent about the foundation taking a stand on the segregation issue.
“As a member of its board of trustees, at a July 9, 1947 executive committee meeting, he urged that the foundation make a statement about the segregation the Freedom Train would be greeted by in the South.
“ Although the committee decided not to make a public announcement about segregation until the tour was underway, it agreed unanimously 'that no segregation of any individual or groups of any kind on the basis of race or religion be allowed at the exhibition of the Freedom Train held anywhere.'”
(Dr. Greg Bradsher. “The Freedom Train and the Contagion of Liberty, 1947-1949.” National Archives. September 19, 2017.)
The project picked up speed. By the fall of 1947, Americans were awash in Freedom Train-themed comic books, school kits, and other materials heralding the approach of the exhibit. The American Heritage Foundation unveiled a new slogan, “Freedom is Everybody’s Job,” and Irving Berlin wrote a catchy song, which débuted in a carefully coördinated media blitz, just before departure.
Historical Note:
As the starting date for the tour got closer criticism of the project increased. Many Americans believed that the Freedom Train was simply a product of “Wall Street imperialism,” while others believed the tour was being undertaken on behalf of the Democratic Party. This train would be the first organized effort in what would later birth the Crusade for Freedom (an American propaganda campaign from the 50s and 60s, which sought to generate domestic support for American Cold War policies).
At each stop the Freedom Train was attended by large audiences eager to view its precious cargo, to take the Freedom Train Pledge, and to sign the Freedom Scroll.
The Train Leaves Philadelphia
All the radio networks of the day covered the train when it left Philadelphia, on September 17, 1947 – the hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution – on its way to its first stop, Atlantic City. None of the train’s personnel were black further supporting the idea that the Freedom Train was “somewhat of a contradiction” in a nation that segregated many of its transportation corridors.
On the week of the train’s departure, Langston Hughes published a new poem, “Freedom Train,” in The New Republic, in which the poet hinted at future trouble:
The Birmingham station's marked COLORED and WHITE.
The white folks go left, the colored go right--
They even got a segregated lane.
Is that the way to get aboard the Freedom Train?
I got to know about this
Freedom Train!
If my children ask me, Daddy, please explain
Why there's Jim Crow stations for the Freedom Train?
What shall I tell my children?...You tell me--'
Cause freedom ain't freedom when a man ain't free.
But maybe they explains it on the
Freedom Train.
(Langston Hughes. “Freedom Train.” 1947.)
In New England and New York, people stood in line for hours, whisked through the train at a rate of ten thousand a day.
Then it prepared for its push into the old Confederacy. As the train began heading south many African American leaders expressed their concern about the possibility of segregated viewing of the documents.
Bradsher reports …
“Its first stop was Charlottesville, Virginia, where the return of Jefferson’s documents was treated as something of a family reunion. Deeper into the South, the project’s contradictions became more difficult to manage. As Langston Hughes had suspected, many Southern officials had no intention of letting white and black Americans walk through the narrow corridors of the train together.”
(Dr. Greg Bradsher. “The Freedom Train and the Contagion of Liberty, 1947-1949.” National Archives. September 19, 2017.)
Bradsher explains …
“Harry Truman was a proud son of the Confederacy, keenly aware of his own family’s partisanship in the Civil War. But he had grown in the office, and the rising tide of violence against African-Americans had sickened him.
“On October 29, 1947, his Administration had issued “To Secure These Rights,” a report that cited the same historic documents that the train was carrying, to argue that the United States had defaulted on its promise to African-Americans. The fusillade received a mixed response in the South, where leaders awaited the Freedom Train with mounting dread …
“In Birmingham, the commissioner of public safety, Theophilus Eugene (Bull) Connor, was already known for his unreconstructed views. Memphis was also a problem, dominated by an old political machine led by E. H. (Boss) Crump and a mayor, James Pleasants, who argued that 'jostling' in the line was a form of unhealthy contact between the races. A Memphis newspaper summed up the situation with a headline that no satirist could have improved upon: 'Memphis Officials Fear Freedom Train Will Inspire Citizens.'”
(Dr. Greg Bradsher. “The Freedom Train and the Contagion of Liberty, 1947-1949.” National Archives. September 19, 2017.)
Faced with all the controversy, the Heritage Foundation announced that the train would bypass Birmingham and Memphis. In Birmingham, the cancellation was received with resignation, but in Memphis the news hit hard. Many Memphians chartered buses of their own to Nashville, where the train was cheerfully welcomed.
(Laurie B. Green. Battling the Plantation Mentality. 2007.)
Reaction to the cancellation was immediate. Walter White, learning of the cancellation, telegrammed the foundation that “the decision to withdraw [the] Freedom Train from Birmingham and thus put [the] Bill of Rights above local segregation laws, is the greatest Christmas gift to the cause of Democracy which can be given.”
In a syndicated column, White wrote that the decision of the Foundation not to be “cajoled or blackjacked” had done more “to make sharp and clear the issue of bigotry versus democracy than any other episode of recent years. If the Freedom Train has accomplished nothing more than that, it has been worth all the time and money put into its creation.”
This opinion was supported by The New York Times and state officials like executive assistant to the Attorney General, H. Graham Morrison.
Similar thoughts to those above were echoed in Birmingham and in the South. An editorial in The Birmingham Age-Herald on December 26, stated that the important things would be learned from the cancellation and observed that “obviously it is a time for all citizens to make special efforts towards understanding collaboration in the common interest.” It was joined in these views by an editorial in The Birmingham World on December 30. A January 2, 1948, editorial in the same newspaper expressed the hope the Freedom train would be given another tour and that when it did, “Birmingham shamed by the example of other Alabama and Southern cities, ought to be in the forefront on asking that they be displayed here.”
(Dr. Greg Bradsher. “The Freedom Train and the Contagion of Liberty, 1947-1949.” National Archives. September 19, 2017.)
Public critique of the Train continued during the tour. 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. These and other rumblings were described by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as "Negro Communist" agitation.
(Stuart J. Little. The Freedom Train: Citizenship and Postwar Political Culture 1946-1949. 1993.)
The Freedom Train visited forty-seven southern cities without any segregation problems, and according to one foundation executive, in no instance was there a “single incident to mar the decorum, dignity and patriotic spirit of the crowds.” This in itself, Louis Novins believed, represented a constructive achievement and established precedent throughout the South, which was all the more impressive, considering “almost all of these cities have segregation laws covering public gatherings.”
The Freedom Train's 37,160 mile tour lasted from September 17, 1947 to January 22, 1949. It was the only train set ever to operate in every state, and it did so using 52 different railroads. Over 3 million people (officially, 3,521,841) went aboard the Train during its display stops in 326 cities and towns across the land.
Historical Note:
As the Freedom Train rolled, Harry Truman campaigned joyfully during his whistle-stop campaign, as if he had found a freedom train of his own. In 1948, his victory was in part due to the ballots of African-Americans, voting in the Democratic column for the first time. On January 20, 1949, the week that Truman was inaugurated, the Freedom Train pulled back into Washington, D.C., the final stop on a thirty-seven-thousand-mile journey through all forty-eight states. A “Freedom Scroll,” containing the signatures of three million Americans who had boarded the train, was presented to the President, who had agreed to dispatch the train two years earlier, when there was no guarantee that he would be in Washington to welcome it back.
Freedom Train (1947)
By Langston Hughes
I read in the papers about the Freedom Train. I heard on the radio about the Freedom Train. I seen folks talkin' about the Freedom Train. Lord, I been a-waitin' for the Freedom Train! Down South in Dixie only train I see's Got a Jim Crow car set aside for me. I hope there ain't no Jim Crow on the Freedom Train, No back door entrance to the Freedom Train, No signs FOR COLORED on the Freedom Train, No WHITE FOLKS ONLY on the Freedom Train. I'm gonna check up on this Freedom Train. Who's the engineer on the Freedom Train? Can a coal black man drive the Freedom Train? Or am I still a porter on the Freedom Train? Is there ballot boxes on the Freedom Train? When it stops in Mississippi wil it be made plain Everybody's got a right to board the Freedom Train? Somebody tell me about this Freedom Train! The Birmingham station's marked COLORED and WHITE. The white folks go left, the colored go right-- They even got a segregated lane. Is that the way to get aboard the Freedom Train? I got to know about this Freedom Train! If my children ask me, Daddy, please explain Why there's Jim Crow stations for the Freedom Train? What shall I tell my children?...You tell me--' Cause freedom ain't freedom when a man ain't free. But maybe they explains it on the Freedom Train. When my grandmother in Atlanta, 83 and black, Gets in line to see the Freedom, Will some white man yell, Get back! A Negro's got no business on the Freedom Track! Mister, I thought it were the Freedom Train! Her grandson's name was Jimmy. He died at Anzio. He died for real. It warn't no show. The freedom what they carryin' on this Freedom Train, Is it for real--or just a show again? Jimmy wants to know about the Freedom Train. Will his Freedom Train come zoomin' down the track Gleamin' in the sunlight for white and black? Not stoppin' at no stations marked COLORED nor WHITE. Just stoppin' in the fields in the broad daylight, Stoppin' in the country in the wide-open air Where there never was no Jim Crow signs nowhere, No Welcomin' Committees, nor Politicians of note, No Mayors and such for which colored can't vote, And nary a sign of a color line-- For the Freedom Train will be yours and mine! Then maybe from their graves in Anzio The G.I.'s who fought will say, We wanted it so! Black men and white will say, Ain't it fine? At home they got a train that's yours and mine! Then I'll shout, Glory for the Freedom Train! I'll holler, Blow your whistle, Freedom Train! Thank God-A-Mighty! Here's the Freedom Train! Get on board our Freedom Train!
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