Rosa Parks Bus Project Restoration Goal Realized with Support from a Save America’s Treasures Grant
Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village
Dearborn, Michigan
Year of Award: 2002
Federal Amount: $205,000
Matching Amount: $205,000
Rosa Parks was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. This medal bears the inscription “Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement.”
In 1955, Rosa Parks’ actions on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama created a landmark event in America’s Civil Rights era. Seated in the colored section of the bus, Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was ordered by bus driver James F. Blake to give up her seat to a white person because the designated “white section” of the bus was full. By defying Blake’s order, Parks helped to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott that ultimately led to the December 21, 1956 legal integration of the Montgomery Public Transportation System.
Rescue and Restoration
Following the retirement of the Rosa Parks bus, the bus sat in an open field for 30 years, neglected and badly deteriorated. The engine and seats had been removed, the windows were broken, metal was completely rusted or missing, and the original 1948 paint job was barely distinguishable.
In the fall of 2001, the Wall Street Journal published an article announcing the sale of the bus via an Internet auction to be held on October 25, 2001. The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village (Dearborn, Michigan), the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), and the City of Denver, Colorado became very interested in this historic piece. Staff at The Henry Ford Museum conducted extensive research regarding the bus’s history and even sent a conservator to physically evaluate the bus’s authenticity. After careful consideration, The Henry Ford Museum decided to bid on the bus by using special endowment funds designated for the purchase of objects specifically for the museum’s collection. This museum was the highest bidder at $427,919.
The staff immediately began careful assessment of the bus’s extensive conservation and preservation needs. The goal was to preserve the original integrity of the bus by saving as much of its original 1948 form as possible, and to restore the vehicle to the 1955 date of Ms. Parks’ historic ride. Identical replacement pieces were taken from other 1948 General Motors’ buses as needed. The Henry Ford Museum began fundraising for the bus’s major restoration. In 2002, the Rosa Parks bus project received a $205,000 Save America’s Treasures grant.
An American Legacy
When Rosa Parks, a seamstress and active member of the local NAACP, rode the bus home from work on December 1, 1955, she sat on the aisle in the first row of seats allowed for blacks, immediately behind the ten seats designated for whites. When these ten seats were filled and a white man got on the bus, bus driver Blake, following acknowledged and accepted rules of segregation, ordered the first row of black passengers seated just behind the white section to give their row of seats to expand the white section, so that the man could be seated. Parks calmly refused to comply. Her action, arrest, conviction, and appeal challenged the laws of segregation and created a nearly one-year long boycott of the Montgomery Public Transportation System. This boycott was officially organized by a group of active, concerned citizens and religious leaders. The group, the Montgomery Improvement Association, was led by a young African American minister, Martin Luther King, Jr.
As over 75% of the bus riders in Montgomery were African American, this boycott, which lasted 381 days, created economic strife for the bus company and represented a serious social change for the city. In December 1956, the segregation law was ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court and the City of Montgomery’s buses became fully integrated for the first time. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, resulting in the repeal of Montgomery’s segregation law, played a major role in what became America’s national Civil Rights Movement.
Rosa Parks, who acted on her convictions at that moment on December 1, 1955, was reunited with the bus 46 years later on December 1, 2001 at an event hosted by The Henry Ford Museum and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The Save America Treasures grant, awarded in 2002, assisted with the restoration of the bus, ensuring that this important piece of our nation’s cultural heritage is preserved for future generations.
Established in 1999, the Save America’s Treasures program is managed by the National Park Service, with the National Endowment Agencies, to preserve and protect nationally significant properties and collections for future generations of Americans. Stories of saving those treasures will be shared through partnership with the American Architecture Foundation.
Featured photo courtesy of Save America’s Treasures, National Park Service.
