The Freedom Center’s current exhibition, 381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story, tells the stirring history of the very beginning of America’s Civil Rights movement.

The exhibition runs through mid-July in the Jack H. Skirball Gallery.  Using photographs, old television news footage and eyewitness accounts, 381 Days is anchored in the courageous decision in 1955 by a mild-mannered seamstress named Rosa Parks not to move to the back of the Montgomery City Bus that carried her to and from work every day. Her refusal not to move was the opening salvo in what quickly became an organized, grassroots boycott of all the Alabama Capitol’s metropolitan buses. That moment marked the beginning of the end of Jim Crow segregation as African Americans and freedom-loving whites joined hands to seek human justice and civil rights for all citizens.

Coincidental to the exhibit, Major League Baseball’s Civil Rights Game will be played on June 20 at Great American Ball Park, right next door to the Freedom Center and the home of the Cincinnati Reds.  They will play the Chicago White Sox in inter-league action. The game, which honors baseball’s contributions to the struggle for civil rights, will be preceded by several events, including a roundtable discussion at the Freedom Center on June 19.  Also on tap at noon on the day of the game, MLB’s Beacon Awards Luncheon is scheduled at the Duke Energy Center.  Honorees this year are Muhammad Ali, Bill Cosby, and Henry (Hank) Aaron.  Tickets for the luncheon are available through the Reds, at www.reds.com.

381 Days was developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with the Troy University Rosa Parks Library and Museum, with funding support from AARP. Local sponsors of the exhibit are Luxottica, Cintas, Cincinnati Metro and Catholic Healthcare Partners.