Freedom 250 Mobile Museum Launches National Tour for America’s Semiquincentennial
Reagan Campbell /
The Freedom 250 Mobile Museum kickoff event this week launched a nationwide tour of interactive museum trucks designed to bring American history to communities across the country.
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the Mobile Museum truck revealed Wednesday is one of six that will tour the United States in celebration of the semiquincentennial.
Dr. Matthew Spalding, vice president for Washington operations at Hillsdale College, delivered remarks on America and its founding at Revolution Academy in Summerfield, North Carolina.
“In 1776, when it announced itself to the world, America was little more than 13 small colonies on a barren continent, thousands of miles from their ancestral homeland, surrounded by hostile powers,” Spalding said at the event. “Ours is the story of a band of patriots who united together to declare independence from—and declare war against—the most powerful nation in the world. At its birth, our Founders justified independence and nationhood by asserting self-evident truths.”
The Mobile Museum truck trailer expands three times its size by extending on both sides. Inside are two rooms—one covering pre-American Revolution history and the other covering post-American Revolution history.
Love of History
Hillsdale College helped curate and edit the educational materials featured inside the trucks.
Spalding explained the inspiration for Mobile Museum trucks: “I vividly remember America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976. I was in middle school and remember the fireworks and the Tall Ships and the Freedom Train. All that deepened my love of country and sparked my love of history.”
The trucks provide interactive opportunities for young visitors. They include videos of George Washington, interactive screens where visitors can sign the Declaration of Independence themselves, and quizzes that let you see which side of the Revolution you would have been on.
The kickoff event took place at Revolution Academy in Summerfield, North Carolina, and featured speakers and participants such as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Jill Simonian of PragerU Kids, and Richard Childress, CEO of Childress Racing.
Cross-Country Tour
After the event, Spalding told The Daily Signal that his “objective is to help people learn—and in some cases relearn—that history, spark their interest in it and help them fall in love with their country again.”
The trucks will tour the country, stopping at schools, NASCAR races, and rodeos, giving communities an opportunity to visit.
“The Declaration of Independence doesn’t say, ‘Here are our personal opinions,’” Spalding said. “It says, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ and that difference is at the very center of what we wanted to capture.”
He emphasized the strength of America’s founding ideas.
“This is a good country,” Spalding said. “We’re not perfect, but it’s a great country and that has everything to do with those beginnings.”
The Freedom 250 tour ensures that those beginnings are not forgotten.