The Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle film screening and discussion series continues with the presentation of the 2012 documentary Freedom Riders on Monday, April 21st, 6:00 p.m. at the Moline Public Library (3210 41st Street). Augustana College's Dr. Christopher Whitt will lead the discussion. This event is free and no registration is required.
Attracting a diverse group of volunteers?black and white, young and old, male and female, secular and religious, northern and southern?the Freedom Rides of 1961 took the civil rights struggle out of the courtroom and onto the streets of the Jim Crow South. Freedom Riders tells the terrifying, moving, and suspenseful story of a time when white and black volunteers riding a bus into the Deep South risked being jailed, beaten, or killed, as white local and state authorities ignored or encouraged violent attacks. The film includes previously unseen amateur 8mm footage of the burning bus on which some Freedom Riders were temporarily trapped, taken by a local twelve-year-old and held as evidence since 1961 by the FBI.
A professor in the political science department of Augustana College since 2007, Dr. Christopher Whitt is one of the principal founders and contributing members of the school's Africana Studies program. He received his M.A. and PhD from the University of Maryland, where he researched the impact of the racial wealth gap on Black political participation. He currently teaches the course "Race, Wealth, and Inequality in American Politics" as well as courses on United States government, politics, and citizenship.
Created Equal is presented as part of the six-week series Created Equal and Changing America, which explores our nation's civil rights history through film, exhibition, and presentations. More information can be found online at molinelibrary.com/createdequal
Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle is made possible through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of its Bridging Cultures initiative, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Changing America is presented by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The traveling exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.
Local support for Created Equal and Changing America has been provided by Friends of the Moline Public Library, WQPT, and The Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus/QCOnline.
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