New mural unveiled at Montgomery’s Freedom Rides Museum
In honor of the 64th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, a new community mural has been unveiled at the Freedom Rides Museum in downtown Montgomery.
The mural, called “That We Shall Someday,” was created by local artist Milton Madison.
The unveiling ceremony included speakers, historical remarks and songs.
It was on May 4, 1961, that a group called the Freedom Riders started out on a journey that changed the course of civil rights history as they fought against segregation in the nation’s bus service. Members were attacked when they arrived at the bus station in Montgomery, and then arrested.
At the Montgomery Greyhound bus station which is now the museum, photos of the Freedom Riders’ mug shots are on display on the front of the building on Court Street.
Four of the surviving Freedom Riders who had made the trip to Montgomery in 1961 were present yesterday to be recognized and to witness the unveiling of the mural.
They are:
Miss Ette Simpson Ray, who was a 19-year-old student at Tennessee A&I (now Tennessee State)
Miss Joan Mulholland, who was a 19 years old secretary working in the Washington office of Sen. Claire Engle
Dr. Lenora Taitt-Magubane, who was a 23-year-old graduate of Spelman College
Hezekiah Watkins, who was a 13-year-old eighth grade student from Jackson, Mississippi, the youngest of the Freedom Riders
“We were just ordinary people, “Mulholland said. “You don’t have to be anybody special to do something important, so get out there and do it.”
The Freedom Riders Museum is closed right now for the installation of the new exhibit that will be ready this summer.
But outside, they did have the physical version of the mural and a fully-restored 1957 bus, one of the same model buses that the Freedom Riders rode in 1961.
