Mobile museum rolls through suburbs teaching lessons of Civil Rights Movement, Holocaust

A bus parked outside the Palatine Park District Community Center this week is taking visitors on a virtual trip through history, teaching lessons about the Civil Rights Movement and the Holocaust that resonate today.

That connection is part of the message of the Mobile Museum of Tolerance, a national initiative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

It’s weeklong stay in Palatine ends Friday, when it will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 250 E. Wood St. From there, it travels to the Bensenville Community Public Library, where it will be open beginning at 10 a.m. Tuesday at 200 S. Church Road.

A classroom on wheels, the museum’s walls feature a montage of sound and images, including footage of the civil rights marches of the 1960s, the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and images of Anne Frank and her family.

“We’ll also talk about things like protests, media literacy and propaganda,” said Elizabeth Blair, program manager for the Illinois Mobile Museum of Tolerance.

In addition to the displays, there are workshops, including one showing the impact of social media algorithms.

The 40-foot-long bus with a capacity for 30 visitors is the original vehicle in a fleet of 12 mobile museums nationwide.

The program launched in 2021. Funding for the Illinois fleet comes from the Illinois Department of Human Rights, said Alison Pure-Slovin, the Wiesenthal center’s head of advocacy for the Midwest and South.

The educational sessions are aimed at students in grades 5-12. Admission is free.

“We want to teach students to be upstanders, not bystanders, through the lens of history,” Pure-Slovin said. “History continues to repeat itself. We need to use our voice for good, not for bad.”

Visitors are sent home with a message of empathy as the basis for peaceful change.

Julie Duncan, education associate with the museum, said visitors see parallels between today’s events and history.

“We leave them with, 'OK, what can we do?'” she said. “It gives them a sense of having a little bit of power.”

Palatine resident Esther Malagon, who came to the United States from Mexico, attested to the exhibit’s power. Malagon said she loves this country and lives in a nice neighborhood, but “Discrimination is still in this time.”