At PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, on September 17, 1947, U.S. Senator Edward Martin spoke before several thousand who gathered at the Broad Street station to witness the launch of America’s Freedom Train. There had been a glut of news stories about the train, including one that came to the public’s attention only a few days before the scheduled departure.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on a fairly substantial scheme being planned by the local Communist Party to sabotage the train. The Communists wanted to discredit the train calling it a propaganda stunt created by big business to confuse the people about the “cover-up” agenda of the Imperialists that ran rampant on Wall Street.
Official Postcard of the Freedom Train
The Freedom Train was first and foremost the idea of U. S. Attorney General Thomas C. Clark. Clark served as AG during the Truman administration and later as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. It was meant to be a freedom museum on wheels. It carried the original versions of the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Truman Doctrine, Emancipation Proclamation and the Bill of Rights on its tour of more than 300 cities in all 48 states.
(card was manufactured in Rutherford, NJ.)
Senator Martin claimed the train was America’s best weapon against communism and during his speech he challenged any Communist within the sound of his voice to prove him wrong.
Martin was not among those who advanced Anti‑communism as a hot debate topic, but he worked hard to preserve America as he remembered it. In 1947 the United States was developing its opening moves in the Cold War, and leaders feared that Soviet influence could spread into Europe and into American institutions. They fought back with the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the Freedom Train that all worked together to frame the national dialog in those years. We needed to win the struggle between American democracy and Soviet communism.
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After the Freedom Train left Philadelphia in 1947 it did not follow the published timetable for several reasons. However, it did make more than 300 scheduled stops across all 48 states over a 30,000‑mile route. (The full itinerary may be found in several archives and period newspapers.)
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And as many may suspect, the “stop‑by‑stop” accounts in local newspapers lauded the three and a half million visitors who came to see the train. In my own hometown an account appeared in the September 23 issue of The Millville Daily Republican that reviewed a high school assembly and the field trip taken by Miss Florence E. Shelly’s American History class.
All this certainly does not reverse the controversy and intolerant behavior of some fellow citizens. In mid-October the train was refused permission to stop in Memphis, Tennessee because the local government would not suspend their local segregation rules. The same thing happened in Birmingham, Alabama. (Accounts can be found in the Memphis Press-Scimitar of Friday, November 21, 1947, and The Birmingham News of Monday, December 29, 1947.)
In the February 16, 1948, issue of the Albuquerque Tribune a banner headline told of the 1,400+ who visited the train. Among them were two young boys who arrived quite early – first in line was Tommy McCaffrey, a lad crippled by polio who needed crutches to move around, and soon behind him was Billy Ramirez who set his alarm early so he could visit the Freedom Train and still be on time for his classes at Washington Junior High School where he was a 9th grader.
The Wichita Eagle’s issue of May 30, 1948, carried a full-page public service announcement that read: “Everything you have … Everything you are … Everything you ever can be is on your Freedom Train.” It continued by telling that, “One hundred and thirteen documents, the most precious pieces of paper in the whole world” are on that train.
On Wednesday, October 7, 1948, the Winchester (Virginia) Star reported that the freedom train would visit tomorrow. The editor called the train, “a reminder that America is a nation of many peoples” and a reminder that the liberty Americans have enjoyed was bought with the blood of our ancestors.
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And so it was, across the nation for 16 months, from September 1947 to January 1949.
The [Washington, D.C.] Evening Star of Monday, January 17, 1949, reported on the Freedom Train’s final stop. The headline read: The 3,480,786th Person Boarded the Freedom Train on Return Home.
It wasn’t a conductor, but a strapping Marine who helped a little man aboard the train, and as far as the Marine was concerned, his latest passenger.
AND
A speaker who was determined to welcome the train home
reminded the audience that:
Thomas Jefferson once warned that liberty cannot be inherited, it must be rewon by each succeeding generation; only by working at democracy can we make democracy work for us.
Another fine and edifying article. Thank you, Ray. I knew about the Liberty Bell on a different cross-country trip, and about Freedom Riders’ pivotal bus travels, but I did not know about the Freedom Train. It’s rather sobering to think of all those important papers roaming free together — a lot of eggs in one amazing basket!