Rosa Parks' Bus Restored

This Old Look is not just any newly restored bus, but a rolling piece of civil rights history. This is the actual bus on which a black woman, Rosa Parks, declined to give up her seat to a white man and was subsequently arrested as a result in 1955, one of the significant events of the civil rights movement.

The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI unveiled the bus yesterday. The bus had been sitting, vacant and neglected, in a field in Alabama for thirty years after its retirement. The owner of the bus at the time was told by the transit agency in Montgomery, AL, that this was the "Rosa Parks Bus", but needed further proof. Newspaper clippings had ID'd the bus to its fleet number (2857). Librarian Tom Jones of the Motor Bus Society helped further by verifying the bus as a 1948 GM TDH-3610, serial number 1132 and concurring that the bus was in service in Montgomery in 1955. All of the pieces of the puzzle had come together: the bus was the one, alright. The Ford Museum spent almost $800,000 acquiring and restoring the bus to near-new condition (the goal was to have the bus as it appeared on December 1, 1955). The bus will be on permanent display at the museum. Ms. Parks, who will celebrate her 90th birthday in a few weeks, was not at the ceremony on Friday.