Freedom Riders

Director/Producer/Writer: Stanley Nelson
Producer: Laurens Grant
Category: Democratic process; Ethnic Diversities
Total Running Time: 114 min.
Release Date: 2010
Website: http://pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders

Synopsis

Freedom Riders is the first feature-length film about a courageous band of civil rights activists who called themselves the Freedom Riders. They challenged segregation in interstate transport in the American South during the spring and summer of 1961. The attention the movement generated caused the federal government to take down Jim Crow signs of “whites only” and “colored only,” allowing every American to travel freely—a legacy we enjoy today.

This film documents a crucial chapter in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement that speaks to everyone who has suffered injustice.

Trailer

About the Filmmaker

STANLEY NELSON, recipient of a 2002 MacArthur Fellowship, is an award-winning filmmaker best known for his groundbreaking historical documentaries that illuminate critical but overlooked history. Nelson's work for American Experience includes Wounded Knee, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind and The Murder of Emmett Till. Nelson has been honored with the Sundance Special Jury Prize, Peabody Award, Primetime Emmy, and three IDA Awards. He directed Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, which won a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton and the Sundance Film Festival's Freedom of Expression Award. His 2004 film, A Place of Our Own, a semi-autobiographical look at the African-American middle class, screened at the Sundance Film Festival and later on PBS' Independent Lens. In 2005, PBS' American Masters debuted Nelson's Sweet Honey in the Rock: Raise Your Voice, which went on to become a top-selling concert film. He produced and directed Wounded Knee, one of the five films that formed part of the We Shall Remain series for American Experience. Nelson is the executive producer of Firelight Media, a nonprofit production company dedicated to telling the stories of people, places and issues that are underrepresented in popular culture.