The original bus that Rosa Parks rode, when she refused to give her seat to a white passenger, was sitting in a field outside Montgomery, Alabama until it was salvaged. The 1948 GM bus is now on display in The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

A similar bus was recently purchased and restored by local attorney and city school board member, Van Henri White. He has converted a 1957 GM diesel-engine, 24-seat bus into a civil-rights museum on wheels.

"I thought it was the perfect way to tell Rosa Parks' story, so people could actually see her struggle," says White.

The bus is equipped with historical photographs. It will also have a drop-down DVD system, and there will be staged re-enactments of Parks' ordeal.

Parks had a similar experience on the same bus with the same driver four years earlier, says White.

During the famous incident, Parks "was not in the front of the bus, either, as some people have stated," says White. "She was seated in the middle, in an area called ‘No Man's Land.'"

African-Americans could sit in this area as long as whites weren't using those seats, says White. But if one white person wanted to sit in the area, all of the African- Americans had to leave their seats.

White plans to take the bus to schools and places of worship throughout the county. The bus' first appearance will be at Franklin Educational Campus, 950 Norton Street, on Friday, November 9.