Antioch College’s Coretta Scott King Center to Host National Exhibition on 1961 Freedom Riders
Center to Showcase Civil Rights Exhibit June 8 through June 26

Antioch College and the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom (CSKC) are pleased to announce that they will host the national traveling exhibition Freedom Riders, which looks at six months in 1961 when more than 400 courageous Americans – old and young, black and white, men and women, Northern and Southern – risked their lives to challenge segregated facilities in the South. The exhibition, which will be on display from June 8 through June 26 at the CSKC on Antioch’s campus, is a companion to the May 2011 PBS broadcast of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film Freedom Riders, directed by Stanley Nelson. The Antioch College Office of Alumni Relations and the Herndon Gallery are co-sponsors of the event along with the CSKC as the primary sponsor.

The Freedom Riders exhibition combines powerful photography and news coverage of the 1961 Freedom Rides and examines the movement from many perspectives – that of the Riders, the Kennedy administration, and the international community. To enhance the experience, visitors can use their cell phones to access powerful first-hand audio accounts of this dangerous experiment in the fight for civil rights.

The Freedom Riders had a simple but daring plan: to board buses in small interracial groups to test and challenge segregated facilities in the South. The Freedom Riders endured savage beatings, humiliation, and imprisonment, but ultimately, their brave actions and commitment to nonviolence changed America forever. Freedom Riders explores this little-known chapter in civil rights history, and explains how the selfless actions of the Freedom Riders laid the groundwork for some of the most important civil rights legislation in our nation’s history.

The exhibition, created by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and PBS’s flagship history series, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, is funded through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Exhibit is free and open to the public Monday through Friday 10am to 8pm.