segregation The announcement of the Freedom Train plan on May 22, 1947, provoked spirited commentary on the state of Freedom in Black America. Black American poet Langston Hughes wrote a critical poem, "Freedom Train", in which he described the Freedom Train passing through the segregated southern states, where black and white passengers rode in separate cars. The poem was famously recorded by Paul Robeson. Facing a public relations backlash and seeking to brand the Western Bloc as more free than its counterpart, the Truman administration announced in September 1947 a policy of desegregation for the train, scheduled to depart only two weeks later. Mayor James J. Pleasants Jr., of Memphis, Tennessee announced that black and white people would be allowed to visit the Freedom Train only during separate visiting hours. (Pleasants acted with the support of Boss Edward H. Crump, the most influential figure in Memphis politics during the former half of the twentieth century.) When Freedom Train organizers then canceled the train's planned stop in Memphis, Mayor Pleasants responded that segregated viewing hours were necessary to avert "race trouble" that would inevitably result from interracial "jostling and pushing". To Freedom Train stops in other cities, the mayor's office sent undercover agents, who reported that, first, some other southern cities had enforced segregation during viewing, and furthermore, that white patrons of the Freedom Train elsewhere had disliked the presence of Black Americans. In Montgomery, Alabama, agitation by Edgar Nixon and Rosa Parks resulted in the appointment of black members to the local Freedom Train planning committee and a promise of desegregation during the train's visit. In Birmingham, Alabama, protest from public safety commissioner Bull Connor insisted that black and white people would wait for the train in separate lines and take turns entering. The idea behind the "Birmingham Plan" was that whites and blacks would technically be on board the train at the same time, without having to encounter each other directly. Under pressure, Connors and his colleague James E. Morgan stated: Our segregation law is for the protection of the white and black races in the city, and for the prevention of disorders. . . . It is not a mantle to be set aside at the instance of this or that visitor to the city. If those in charge of the Freedom Train should see fit to bring it to Birmingham, they will be welcomed cordially, but cannot