Baby Boomers who are history buffs will be captivated by the 
documentary Freedom Riders which aired on PBS on May 16 and 17th. The film based on a book by the same title, gives a heart-wrenching and downright disturbing look back at the segregated south in 1961, as it justly acknowledges the integrated groups of college students whose bus trips to Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi and other cities in the Deep South carried them to the front lines of the civil rights movement and helped end Jim Crow practices.
The Freedom Riders were trained to be non-violent and the young men and women were unprepared for the danger that awaited them once they arrived at the destination cities where they were threatened, degraded, savagely beaten and imprisoned by angry, racist mobs. Even viewers of the film who watched TV news coverage of civil rights protests decades ago may be moved to tears by some narratives in the film. Particularly disturbing is one female student’s graphic account of the examination of her private parts by a jail guard who dipped her gloved hand into what the student believed was Lysol before inserting her finger into the young girl’s cavity.
The film’s award winning director, Stanley Nelson, peppered black and white photographs with interviews featuring a number of the now aged Freedom Riders who were among the numerous students that traveled south on Greyhound and Trailway buses, some of which were disabled and firebombed by frenzied mobs. The haunting songs occasionally played over still shots intensify the viewer’s recollection of a period that many Americans would like to forget. One unsettling statement that exemplifies the mentality of the southern racists was, at one point, repeated off-camera by a faceless voice, “I’ve got to hate somebody.”
Freedom Riders gives earned recognition to people who were as instrumental, but perhaps not as widely acclaimed for affecting changes in the civil rights movement as were more notable personalities like Dr. King and Rosa Parks. The students, too, were heroes.
The film is difficult to watch but hard to turn off. It highlights a disturbing period in America, and should be viewed by all, especially today’s young African Americans who have little or no knowledge of their cultural history. It might just enlighten the minds of some of today’s wayward youths who think that being heroic means living the thug life.
The film runs nearly two hours and is currently available for free viewing in its entirety on PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/watch