We Once Had a Freedom Train -- We Need Another

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Celebrations of American Independence are now in full swing, at least in communities that still consider it important enough to commemorate. John Adams anticipated such festivities for the special day he helped to bring about, writing to his wife Abigail that it should be “solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews [Shows], Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Adams’ predictions were spot on. We’ve continued to add new activities to his list: backyard barbeques, block parties, rock concerts, food trucks, and now spectacular events like mixed martial arts matches on the White House grounds, military plane flyovers, a Grand Prix set for August on the National Mall, America 250 community-based events, and other revelries the Founders couldn’t imagine. It’s unfortunate that many people today, particularly on the left, cannot find much worth celebrating, to the point of objectifying the American flag as unrelatable at best or, at worst, an unredeemable symbol of oppression.

Celebrating national independence can be an inspiring form of patriotic piety, but moments like this also offer a rare chance to show how independence made possible a new constitutional republic whose institutions and laws have largely protected and expanded citizen participation while advancing the promise of the American Idea: liberty, equality, and opportunity rooted in inalienable rights proclaimed in the Declaration.

Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” The best way to mitigate that loss is by providing civics education that teaches why and how we participate and engage with one another within a constitutional framework. These subjects, usually taught in middle and high school, are what every immigrant applying for citizenship is tested on before they pledge an Oath of Allegiance to the United States. Given the breakdown we’ve experienced in our political discourse and suggestions that our system of government needs to be radically altered, a full-on public push for civics education is needed more than ever.

To help meet this need, the National Archives launched, literally, the Freedom Plane, billed as a nationwide tour supporting civics education by transporting nine documents on a Boeing 737 to eight cities in as many states between March 6-August 16. You’ve heard of this, right? I didn’t think so. The route, starting in Kansas City, zig-zags to Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Miami, Dearborn, and concludes in Seattle. Of the nine documents, the most significant are a copy of the Declaration of Independence made from a copper plate of the original; the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War; a draft of the Constitution before final revisions; and the Senate’s 1789 revisions to the Bill of Rights. Three of the documents are short allegiance pledges signed by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Benedict Arnold (you read that correctly). The flying exhibit is designed with educators in mind and comes with related, web-based teaching media.

By comparison, in 1947 in the immediate aftermath of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, a project was conceived by President Harry Truman’s attorney general, a Texan named Tom Clark. Its mission was to “reestablish the common ground of all Americans” by using 127 historic documents and six historic flags from the National Archives to show how they shared a common political history founded on freedom and how that original vision expanded to embrace every American. The initiative was called the Freedom Train.

A sleek, white locomotive trimmed with blue and red stripes pulled seven climate-controlled cars, including three used to display artifacts behind one-inch, bulletproof glass. The engine pulled into 326 cities and towns in all (then) 48 states. Logistics were incredible but quickly worked out, using 52 different railroad lines. The 37,160-mile tour rolled along from September 17, 1947 to January 22, 1949. The train’s contents were guarded by a contingent of U.S. Marines.

In this low-to-no tech era, documents were simply presented for public viewing, including the Declaration, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, the Treaty with Japan to end World War II, and even a fourteenth-century copy of the Magna Carta. Barney Balaban, the head of Paramount Studios and a longtime theater exhibitor, took the lead in putting together the displays and worked with other moguls to produce an 11-minute film shown in thousands of theaters, Our American Heritage, focused on common core values crossing ethnicity, race, creed, and class. Hollywood executives, under scrutiny for hiring communist leaning screenwriters, largely designed and funded the Freedom Train.

In his recounting of the Freedom Train, historian David Hackett Fischer noted that at some stops, people waited more than six hours to board. Today It’s hard to imagine that a line stretched fifteen blocks outside New York’s Grand Central Station to see the displays. Fisher himself recalled waiting in line as a boy with thousands in Baltimore, including immigrants from Eastern Europe, Appalachian Mountain people, and Blacks, groups not often seen standing together as equals to learn about the origins of American freedom and equality. Segregation was not allowed on the Freedom Train, and when local authorities in Birmingham, Alabama insisted on it, the American Heritage Foundation, which organized the exhibition, made the difficult decision not to stop there. No other town would challenge the no-segregation policy.

Packets were made available explaining what visitors saw, as well as a booklet titled Good Citizen that delineated not only the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship. It might not have been a semester-long course on history and civics, but the fundamentals were made accessible to the masses at large, logging over 3.5 million visitors. The millionth attendee, a sixteen-year-old Oklahoma girl, traveled sixty miles through a blizzard to see it. Local events related to the Freedom Train were put on by schools as well as civic, religious, and veterans’ groups that likely put the number exposed to the program near 10 million. Upon leaving, visitors were asked to take a short Freedom Pledge affirming fundamental ideas of liberty. “A later generation would have laughed cynically,” Fischer wrote, “but in 1947 America was a nation of believers.”

The traveling exhibit and its carefully curated displays projected a common political identity founded on core principles that left sharp distinctions between how we govern ourselves as a nation compared to Soviet authoritarianism. Indeed, the threat of spreading communism prompted a clarification of who we are and what we stand for: individual freedom and corresponding civic responsibility; respecting the rights of others; doing the essentials of participating, such as educating ourselves on issues, voting, and serving on a jury. This was no thin, schmaltzy patriotism, but practical citizenship. We were an exceptional nation, not just because we reached the status of the leading global superpower, but because of a common political culture built on liberty and opportunity undergirded by E Pluribus Unum, a transcending American unity that respected pluralism without diluting the civic traditions that held us together. That was the mission, and a successful one, of the Freedom Train -- so successful it was repeated in a similar fashion for the Bicentennial.

Now more than ever, we need a Freedom Train touring America. But is that even possible in an increasingly fragmented society characterized less by “From Many, One,” but instead an intractable tribalism based on endless “identities”? Perhaps it might be shown that the United States is still worthy of what Lincoln called “The Last Best Hope of Earth.” All should be welcome aboard, even those who no longer believe in it.

Mike Tsichlis (miketichlis.com) is an author and historian based in St. Louis. He holds a doctorate in Public Policy and is completing a manuscript on the lives of the Skouras brothers, three Greek immigrant siblings who immigrated to America who rose to become leaders in the motion picture industry during the Golden Age of film.

Image: National Archives