A special sneak preview of a bold new PBS film, Freedom Riders, winner of the Heartland Film Festival Crystal Heart Award for Best Documentary in 2010, is part of a two-day celebration of the film and its heroes. The Freedom Riders celebration will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, November 17-18, in Albany and is sponsored by the Georgia Humanities Council, the Albany Civil Rights Institute, Albany State University (ASU), and Thronateeska Heritage Center.
The first event will be the sneak preview of the film at ASU's ACAD Auditorium (Room 150) on Wednesday evening, November 17 at 7:00 pm. ASU students, members and friends of ACRI, and anyone in the Albany area wishing to attend will get to see the two-hour film six months before its first nationwide broadcast on PBS TV stations in May 2011.
Freedom Riders Film
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a major civil rights organization, played an important role in the 1961 Freedom Rides which involved more than four hundred participants who challenged Jim Crow segregation in interstate travel throughout the South. The Freedom Rides were not a new concept in 1961. CORE had done such a thing in the Upper South fourteen years earlier known as the "Journey of Reconciliation." But, this time, the Freedom Rides would venture into the Deep South and would run from May through the fall, ending in a train ride from Atlanta to Albany in December. During these long rides, most of them on buses, many Freedom Riders were beaten, arrested, and brutalized. Buses were firebombed and the nation witnessed just how determined many southern whites were to maintain the system of segregation.
On Thursday, November 18 at 7:30 pm, the Albany Civil Rights Institute will feature Albany Freedom Riders, A. Lenora Taitt-Magubane and Joan Browning at its Community Night presentation to be held in the Chautauqua Room at Thronateeska Heritage Center, 100 Roosevelt Ave., Albany. Thronateeska is located in the old Union Railroad Station where the Albany Freedom Riders were arrested on December 10, 1961. Taitt-Magubane and Browning's presentation is entitled, "Riding to Freedom: The December 1961 Albany Freedom Ride." The speakers were two of eight Freedom Riders and an observer on the Albany Freedom Ride. They will share their experiences on disembarking in Albany only to be arrested and caught up in the Albany Movement that swept the city.
Both the ASU sneak preview of the Freedom Riders film and the presentation by the two Albany Freedom Riders have been funded through a grant from the Georgia Humanities Council and are free and open to the public.
The ACRI Monthly Community Night next month (December 16) will feature Professor Donald T. Hata who will discuss "Japanese American Civil Rights and American Concentration Camps."
Hilton Garden Inn Albany and Sam's Club are the sponsors of ACRI Monthly Community Nights.
For more information, contact ACRI Executive Director Lee W. Formwalt at (229) 432-1698 or lee@acrmm.org.
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