Freedom Riders

The Leonard Lopate Show | Mar 19, 2012

From May to December 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives by traveling together through the Deep South, deliberately violating Jim Crow laws. These Freedom Riders’ beliefs in non-violent activism was tested as violence and racism greeted them. Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr., cofounder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and participant in the Freedom Rides, and Gerald Stern, who was a young civil rights lawyer in the Justice Department at the time, discuss the Freedom Riders actions and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and look at the legacy of the movement today.

In 2011, PBS released Stanley Nelson’s American Experience documentary film Freedom Riders.

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