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PBS’ ‘Freedom Riders’ marks civil rights milestone By John Crook © Zap2it “American Experience” ob- serves the 50th anniversary of a seismic event in the Ameri- can civil rights movement in “Freedom Riders,” an electrify- ing two-hour documentary pre- miering Monday, May 16, on PBS (check local listings). Based partly on historian Raymond Arsenault’s book “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Jus- tice,” writer-director-producer Stanley Nelson’s (“The Murder of Emmett Till”) film opens in 1961, just a few months after the election of President John F. Kennedy. Despite two Supreme Court decisions mandating the integration of interstate travel facilities, much of the Deep South remained strongly segregated as white Southerners simply elected to ignore the federal mandates. Frustrated, the Congress of Racial Equality hit on a simple yet radical plan: It would send a small, racially mixed group of Americans on buses from Washington, D.C., into the heart of the South, where these “freedom riders” would willfully but peacefully violate the segregationist poli- cies routinely still enforced in restaurants, bus depots and restroom facilities. Somewhat naively, the vol- unteers for the two-week May mission knew they would face some resistance, but most of them believed that they only would be refused service or, at worst, arrested. And their first few stops, in Virginia, the Car- olinas and Georgia, seemed to bear that out. Then they hit Alabama. And Alabama hit back, hard and violently. When a Grey- hound bus bearing one group of Freedom Riders rolled into Anniston on a sunny Mother’s Day morning, a mob orga- nized by the Ku Klux Klan was waiting. Cursing the passen- gers, the 200 white men broke the bus windows and punc- tured the tires. The driver was able to get the bus back on the road before the tires went completely flat, whereupon the white Southerners attacked the vehicle again, setting it on fire and beating the passen- gers when they finally were able to escape the smoke and flames. Not long after that, a Trail- ways bus, its Riders knowing nothing about the Anniston incident, reached Birmingham, where a bigger mob was wait- ing. Although Alabama Gov. John Patterson didn’t know it, the city’s de facto boss, Com- missioner of Public Safety (and fire-breathing segrega- tionist) Bull Connor, secretly had agreed to give the Klan unfettered access to the Rid- ers, whom they beat within an inch of their lives. Meanwhile, back in Wash- ington, Attorney General Robert Kennedy had received alarming reports of the ex- plosive situation in Alabama and dispatched his assistant, Nashville-born John Seigen- thaler, to the scene, where he found the bedraggled Riders trapped in the Birmingham air- SHOP 250 BOOTHS! 72,000 sq. ft. Climate Controlled Shopping Experience Gifts, Home Décor, Furniture and Antiques Dutch Kitchen Restaurant and Borkholder Event Centre port by the relentless mob. No bus driver in the area would agree to carry the Freedom Riders any further, so CORE aborted the mission, but it was only with Seigenthaler’s intervention that the group was able to escape by plane to New Orleans. If Seigenthaler thought the crisis had been averted, how- ever, his relief was short-lived. Only hours later, his boss was back on the phone with the alarming news that a deter- mined group of students was coming down from Nashville to continue the Ride, led by one of their peers, Diane Nash. “I knew that if the Freedom Ride had stopped right then, we would have to have got- ten many, many people killed before we were able to have a movement about anything,” Nash says today, “because the message would have been sent that you could stop a (peaceful) campaign by inflict- ing massive violence, and it would have been really hard to overcome that message.” That second leg of the Ride eventually was successful, capturing the attention of sup- porters from across the coun- try, who quickly traveled south to step in for Riders who had been injured or arrested. The situation was nothing short of a nightmare for Patterson and, in one of the PBS telecast’s biggest coups, Nelson has the Alabama governor talking can- didly about those tense days, when he was stuck with Ken- nedy, a political ally, on one side and Patterson’s mostly angry white constituency on the other, flanked by the loath- some Connor and the Klan. “I never honestly imagined that (Nelson) would get the governor of Alabama to talk in a really honest way,” says “American Experience” execu- tive producer Mark Samels. “Later I asked him, ‘How in the hell did you get (Patterson)?’ and he said, ‘He wanted to talk. He needed a little con- vincing that we weren’t going to do just some drive-by sen- sationalist thing, that we really were interested in his perspec- tive.’ Patterson really wanted to describe what a fight he saw himself in. He’s a man who saw himself in a vise.” For an entire generation of Americans, the Freedom Ride of 1961 may be little more than a footnote now, but this extraordinary documentary captures a volatile moment in U.S. history that had a pro- found effect on society. It also remains intensely relevant today, with its message cel- ebrating individuals who don’t wait around for a designated leader to tell them to do the right thing. “You know how we all felt in the hours and days after 9/11, that we were literally living through a period where every minute was being written into history,” Samels says. “These Riders had that same sense, that there was this turning point possibility here, that if they grabbed these reins of history and pulled on them hard enough and didn’t let go, something could happen, something that could lead in turn to something else. And you know what? They did. They changed history through their collective action. Clearing Facts about cataracts! Vision blurry or foggy? Colors dull or muted? Glasses no longer working? Decreased night vision? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you may have cataracts. Schedule your FREE cataract consultation today! 800.283.8393 www.bolingvisioncenter.com GOSHEN OFFICE 1615 Winsted Drive | Goshen IN 46526 “This is a story that is directly relevant to now, as we are seeing how ordinary people led spontaneous revo- lutions in the Middle East. It’s a reminder that we should try to get better leadership, lead- ers who truly lead, and we should get a better functioning government, but change often happens because of our deci- sions and our responsibilities.” That explains the tagline featured in this program’s post- ers and promotional materials: “Could you get on the bus?” “It’s really sort of a shot across the decades,” Samels says. “Is there something in your life that will engage you and cause you make a com- mitment and make sacrifices toward? Because if more of us did that, the world would be a better place.” things up ... www.wedumor.com B Dutch Village Borkholder Antiques, Crafts, and Gift Mall 700 N Tomahawk Tr., Nappanee, IN 574.773.2828 • www.borkholder.com “Freedom Riders: American Experience” airs Monday on PBS (check local listings). 2 The Goshen News • Viewer’s Choice • Saturday, May 14 - Friday, May 20, 2011 Call today for information on our in home & office water stations, water delivery & coffee services. 574-522-9500

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