Rolling civil rights museum to hit road in test of exhibits
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The Freedom Bus rolling museum is getting ready for a test drive, taking the stories behind Indiana's civil rights movement to students in hopes of inspiring a new generation.
The project, a collaboration between Ball State University and Muncie's nonprofit Martin Luther King Dream Team, began when Muncie's transit system donated a retired city bus for the Dream Team to use for educational outreach in 2005. The bus has been repaired and is now wrapped in a graphic depicting King, President John F. Kennedy and other civil rights leaders.
Ball State students working with Beth Messner, an associate professor of communications studies and a member of the Dream Team, spent the fall researching the civil rights movement in Delaware County and surrounding counties.
That research formed the foundation for prototype exhibits that will be installed in the bus and tested this spring with fourth- and fifth-graders, the project's target audience. A team of students will fine-tune the exhibits this semester before displays are professionally built ahead of the bus's official debut in 2016.
The project is "about making history personal," Messner said.
"We want (students) to understand and appreciate that the civil rights movement was not some kind of distant phenomena that only involved people who lived in the South, that here in state of Indiana we had our own struggles and we had people who stepped forward to make a difference in their communities," she said.
There are nearly 40 prototype exhibits detailing stories about people and events. They include Muncie resident Vivian Conley, who was involved with a 1950s campaign to desegregate Tuhey Pool, and Johnny Wilson of Anderson, who battled racial barriers in college basketball. The bus also features a coin box similar to the one on the bus that Rosa Parks rode in Montgomery, Alabama.
Messner said feedback from the fourth- and fifth-graders will help refine the exhibits before they are built.
"We're trying to determine, is it too much content? We don't want to overwhelm visitors," she said.
Students working with the history department also will design curriculum guides that teachers can use to augment students' visits to the bus as well as training manuals for volunteers.
Marie Prevost, a junior history major from Indianapolis, hopes to stay involved in the project after helping to research the stories and design the prototypes last semester. The research took students to historical societies, public libraries, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.
She said she was surprised to see "how far behind Indiana was" in relation to the national movements, citing the case of New Castle, which didn't elect its first black sheriff until the 1980s.
"A lot of people think it was the '50s and '60s and everything was fine afterward," she said. "It was interesting to see how struggles extended far past the '60s deadline that people give the civil rights movement."
Prevost said she hopes youths who visit the Freedom Bus "get a sense of pride from the area that they live in."
"History can be made in a small town in east central Indiana," she said.
Messner said she hopes the project provides role models and inspires young people to become "a force for change."
"There are still challenges when it comes to establishing civil rights for all," she said. "If this experience can inspire them to become part of that ongoing conversation and inspire them to want to help work toward change ... we would consider that a tremendous success."