Freedom Riders, a documentary by award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson, is a powerful, harrowing and inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed American forever. From May until November 1961, more that 400 black and white Americans risked their lives-and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment-for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders' belief in non-violent activism was tested as mob violence and bitter racism greeted them along the way.
“I got up one morning in May and I said to my folks at home, I won't be back today because I'm a Freedom Rider. It was like a wave or a wind that you didn't know where it was coming from or where it was going, but you knew you were supposed to be there."-Pauline Knight-Ofuso, Freedom Rider. (Firelight Media production for American Experience. Text from AE website
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