Event

Freedom Riders

LIVE via SKYPE: Producer LAURENS GRANT
Mon., President's Day, Feb. 21 at 2:45pm

Freedom Riders
In May of 1961 a 23 day bus ride through America's Deep South became a horrific odyssey of violence and shame.
Filmmaker Stanley Nelson's documentary is a meticulously reconstructed journal chronicling the heroic
expedition of the self proclaimed "freedom riders." American citizens confronted fire hoses, baseball bats, fire
bombs, and every kind of brutality for challenging the racist doctrines of segregation. Black and white images of the
black and white protestors seem otherworldly, just as the black and white stripes worn by those unjustly held in a
Mississippi penitentiary seem particularly ironic. When CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) first organized this nonviolent
program, few predicted that it would become as major a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement. Interviews include Congressman John Lewis,
Andrew Young, and former Alabama Governor John Patterson. - Thom Hoffman USA, 2010, 113 min.; Dir.: Stanley Nelson
Official Selection: Sundance Film Festival

in 1961 black college students rode a Greyhound bus to the deep south.
They called themselves Freedom Riders.