I saw this exhibit in September when I visited Culver City's newest museum for the first time. Even if we didn't personally experience the enforced segregation and degradations of the Jim Crow-era South, most have seen a film, read a book, or witnessed the re-telling of accounts from that age.

Get on Board : Stories of the Los Angeles to Houston Freedom Ride at the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum is not your usual look-with-your-eyes-not-with-your-hands exploration of the struggle for civil rights in the United States. You are challenged to sit in the replica jail cell or board the reproduced burnt out hulk of a Freedom Bus and watch the surviving Riders' interviews while maintaining an intellectual distance. Photographs of (very) young people line the gallery walls, all smiles at the beginning of the ride before they came face-to-face with their own countrymen who were willing to use physical violence and intimidation to preserve their status quo. 

Get on Board : Stories of the Los Angeles to Houston Freedom Ride is on display until October 16, 2011. 

The Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum is open Tuesdays - Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from Noon to 4 p.m.  Free parking is available in both the north and south lots. Enter off of Overland Ave. south of Culver Blvd. MCLM website

Their African American Film Series screens the 4th Saturday of each month at 4 p.m. Museum and screening admission are free of charge. October's feature is the 1926 silent film The Flying Ace starring Laurence Criner and Kathryn Boyd.