American Experience’s Freedom Riders documentary earns three Emmy Awards.

The Creative Arts Primetime Emmy Awards were announced last week, and American Experience’s Freedom Riders documentary – a powerful and inspirational account of the 1961 freedom rides – earned three awards. The film captures the remarkable story of the more than 400 Civil Rights activists who rode interstate buses together through the Deep South to protest Jim Crow laws. For a harrowing six months, they risked their own personal safety and endured imprisonment and violence as they set a powerful example for the rest of the nation. Freedom Riders won in each of the categories in which it was nominated, including Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming, Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming and a juried award for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking, the latter of which is determined by a panel of judges in the Nonfiction peer group.

As a sponsor of Freedom Riders as well as the 2011 Student Freedom Ride – in which 40 current college students commemorated the ride’s 50^th anniversary by retracing the original route from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, LA – Liberty Mutual is proud of the film’s continued success, both in earning accolades and demonstrating the power of change that can result from doing the right thing, no matter how difficult.

To learn more about Freedom Riders, visit the Freedom Riders special feature on The Responsibility Project to see 12 short supplementary films to the Emmy-winning documentary as well as a photo journal documenting the 2011 ride in its entirety.