Run Time: 120 min.Call Number: E185.61 .F74 2011
"The filmmaker Stanley Nelson has a stunning accomplishment in 'Freedom Riders,' a documentary that chronicles a crucial, devastating episode of the civil rights movement, an episode whose gruesome visuals impinged on the perception of American liberty around the world. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the freedom rides, the film . . . is a story of ennobled youth and noxious hatred, of decided courage and inexplicable brutality. In May 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality sought to challenge the segregation of interstate travel on public transport and sent forth activists, both black and white, and many of them students, on a bus journey through the South, where they were received with violence that law enforcers refused to tame. . . . It is hard to imagine a feature film conveying the events with a more vivid sense of drama or suspense."
—Ginia Bellafante, New York Times
