JACKSON, Miss. – Filmmaker Stanley Nelson says his new documentary about the courageous activists who defiantly opposed the 1960s segregation of the South may help inspire a new generation of youth.
The film, “Freedom Riders,” recounts the 1961 crusade by daring young activists intent on ending segregated travel on interstate buses in the Deep South. The American Experience film, set to air May 16 on PBS, has been generating buzz on the film festival circuit ever since its showing at Sundance in January.
Most of the riders were college students coached in the art of nonviolent protest by veteran activists, including the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. The students, both Black and White, knew they were risking their lives by traveling on Greyhound and Trailways buses into the rigidly and violently segregated South.
Nelson said the great lesson of “Freedom Riders” is how ordinary citizens much like the hundreds of activists who rode into the South can bring about change.
“It really says that this movement was a movement of people,” Nelson said. “Nobody else will ever be a Martin Luther King. What ‘Freedom Riders’ said is that you don’t have to be.”
That’s the message Nelson wants to impart to students now being recruited to join some original participants in retracing the route of the Freedom Rides next year on their 50th anniversary. More than 165 students from across the nation have applied ahead of a mid-January deadline for one of the 40 seats available for the trip, organized by American Experience.
The tour will begin in Washington, D.C., and cover flash points of the civil rights era, including Anniston, Ala., where the bus was firebombed, and Montgomery, Ala., where riders were beaten by a White mob.
