#freedom train

[usnatarchives]

This remarkable photograph shows the then-oldest living ex-enslaved individual, Mrs. Sally Fickland, viewing the Emancipation Proclamation in the Freedom Train at Philadelphia, on September 17, 1947.

[bignaz8]

Did you know that from 1975 through 1976, a twenty-six car train dubbed the “Freedom Train” toured all forty-eight contiguous U.S. states as part of the nation’s Bicentennial celebration, the 200th Anniversary of American Independence? The train carried over five hundred historically significant objects for Americans to see and learn from, ranging from George Washington’s personal copy of the Constitution to Martin Luther King Jr.’s ministerial robes and even lunar rocks collected by the space program!

In 1974, just before the Freedom Train began its journey, President Gerald R. Ford visited it in Alexandria, Virginia, where it was parked at the Alexandria Railway Station (pictured). Standing on the caboose, Ford spoke to the assembled crowd and called the Freedom Train “one of the focal points for our Bicentennial commemoration.” The precious cargo, meanwhile, represented to Ford “much of our Nation’s past history and our hopes for the future.”

Today, the future is here as we prepare to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary! All aboard the Freedom Train!

📷 Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library / NARA

[collinthenychudson]

Today is the 250th anniversary of the United States becoming an independent country. To mark the occasion, here is a Minecraft build of Southern Pacific GS-4 No. 4449 in it's American Freedom Train livery. This was made using and modified from CraftyFoxeMC's SP 4449 tutorial so credits to him for the original design.

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity

By Cedric de Leon.

[mareislandfoundation]

From Mare Island to the Heart of the Nation

As 1944 dawned, the United States stood at a crossroads of resilience and exhaustion. After more than two years of total war, the entire nation was mobilized: factories running around the clock, ration books worn thin, and gold stars indicating a lost loved one hanging in too many windows. There was an unshakable sense of unity: the war effort touched every household, from the farm fields of Iowa to Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California. Yet beneath the determined patriotism, a quiet fatigue had settled across the country. Families endured long separations, telegrams brought news too often dreaded, and victory still felt distant. Even so, Americans pressed forward believing that every sacrifice, every son sent overseas, and every rivet hammered into a warship was part of a shared purpose: to defeat tyranny and defend freedom.

During that trying year inside the flag loft at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, seamstress Mabel Sauvageau quietly stitched what would become a remarkable piece of American history. Among the many ensigns sewn that year was a No. 11 Navy ensign, marked "U.S. No. 11 MI 44", denoting its size, origin, and year of manufacture. At the time, it was simply one of thousands made to support the Pacific war effort. Its journey, however, would distinguish it forever.

Months later, that very flag found itself aboard the USS LST-779, stashed in the vessel’s flag locker. On the volcanic island of Iwo Jima, during one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, a decision was made to replace the first small American flag raised atop Mount Suribachi with a larger, more visible one.

That second flag, Mabel’s flag, was hoisted by six Marines in a moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. The resulting image became one of the most recognized and reproduced photographs of the 20th century.

Three years later that horrible war had ended and, after two years of peace, America faced growing disillusionment and a crumbling of the unity that had been brought on by war.  The Nation was increasingly marked by racial strife, labor unrest, and Cold War anxieties.  In response the American Heritage Foundation launched the Freedom Train: a traveling exhibition of our Nation’s most treasured founding documents and symbols guarded by an armed Marine Corps contingent aimed at restoring national unity.

Included among the train’s beloved artifacts was the Iwo Jima flag, revered not only for where it flew, but for what it represented: service, unity, and sacrifice. The Freedom Train was a rolling classroom, a cultural mirror, and a political statement which was wildly popular, and its arrival was much anticipated and often heralded by entire sections of local newspapers.  The train hammered away on the important themes of Civic Unity and Patriotism, Education, Historical Awareness, Civil Rights and Inclusion, American democracy as a moral counterweight to totalitarianism, and National Reconciliation and Postwar Identity.

In adherence to the theme of Civil Rights and Inclusion the train maintained a controversial policy of racial integration as opposed to Jim Crow laws which clashed with constitutional ideals and were still in existence. Jim Crow laws were a system of state and local statutes enacted primarily in the American South between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries that enforced racial segregation. The Freedom Train’s sponsors made it clear that it would bypass any community that attempted to segregate access to the train with “Whites Only” lines or other Jim Crow racist mechanisms.  Thus, the Freedom Train and the flag sewn by Mabel Sauvageau underscored the profound contradiction, and promise, of American democracy, but the Freedom Train and the flag had another profound impact.

In the years leading up to and following WWII, proposals emerged in Congress to dissolve or subsume the United States Marine Corps into the Army. Critics questioned the need for a separate amphibious force in a postwar world.

What turned the tide wasn’t just military strategy, it was public sentiment, galvanized in part by the memory of battles like Iwo Jima and the enduring symbolism of the Rosenthal photograph. The inclusion on the Freedom Train of Mabel Sauvageau’s flag and its association with Marine bravery helped fuel advocacy from veterans and civilians alike.  This positive public sentiment along with Marine Corps performance during the Korean War resulted in the passing of the Douglas–Mansfield Act in 1952.  That act enshrined the Marine Corps’ status as a separate and essential branch of the armed forces, protecting it from future attempts at dissolution.

Today, Mabel Sauvageau's flag is preserved at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. Though faded and delicate, its meaning has only grown stronger with time. Thus from the hands of a seamstress in Vallejo to the summit of Suribachi, from a rolling train of hope to the halls of Congress, the flag remains a silent witness to American history, stitched in cloth, carried through war, and woven into the fabric of our national identity.

Dennis Kelly

[iamtryingtobelieve]

Now let the Freedom Train come zooming down the track Gleaming in the sunlight for white and black Not stopping at no stations marked colored nor white Just stopping in the fields in the broad daylight Stopping in the country in the wide open air Where there never was a Jim Crow sign nowhere And no lilly-white committees, politicians of note Nor poll tax layer through which colored can't vote And there won't be no kinda color lines The Freedom Train will be yours and mine

[girlactionfigure]

[guessimdumb]

Visit Original Link

The Heptones - Freedom to the People (1971)

I was listening to a song Make Love Not War with U-Roy and the Heptones, and it struck me the original track was incredibly familiar and absolutely incredible.  I’m still not sure where I’ve heard this song (or the riddim) before, and I’m fairly sure they copped the lyrics from the Chi-Lites’ (For God’s Sake) Give More Power to the People. Nonetheless, I’m really loving both the horns as well as the Heptones’ typically wonderful vocals.