Freedom Writers "Biographical Note" #2

Hiliary Swank

Hilary was discovered as a child by producer Suzy Sachs, who coached her in acting. When she was nine years old, she starred in her first play as "Mowgli" in "The Jungle Book". She began to appear regularly in local theater and school plays. She went to school in Bellingham, where she lived with her family, until she was 16. She competed in the Junior Olympics and Washington State championships in swimming; she ranked 5th in the state in all-around gymnastics (which would come in handy for starring in The Next Karate Kid (1994) years later). In 1990, Hilary and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where she enrolled in South Pasadena High School, and started acting professionally. She appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) but The Next Karate Kid (1994), where she got the part competing against hundreds of other actresses, was her breakout role. Ever since then, she has been much in demand and has worked non-stop in movies. She won the Best Actress Oscar for Boys Don't Cry (1999). She starred in a few minor films before starring in Clint Eastwood's boxing drama Million Dollar Baby (2004) that won her a Golden Globe and a SAG Award, as well as her second Academy Award. She is two for two at the Oscars, a feat she shares only with a few other women. Off-screen, she married Chad Lowe on September 28, 1997. An aficionado for anything that involves the outdoors, she enjoys: sky diving, river rafting and skiing. In addition to the Oscar for her performance as "Brandon Teena" in Boys Don't Cry (1999), Hilary won the Golden Globe Award for "Best Actress in a Drama" and "Best Actress" prizes from The New York Film Critics, The Los Angeles Film Critics, The Chicago Film Critics and The Broadcast Film Critics Association. She earned $75 a day for Boys Don't Cry (1999).She also won the "Breakthrough Performance" prize from The National Board of Review.Hilary then appeared in supporting roles opposite Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves in Sam Raimi's The Gift (2000) and opposite Al Pacino and Robin Williams in Christopher Nolan's Insomnia (2002/I). Hilary then starred as "Alice Paul" in HBO's Iron Jawed Angels (2004) (TV), which told the story of the women's suffragette movement and she was honored with both SAG and Golden Globe nominations for her performance in this film.In 2004, Hilary starred opposite Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman as the title character in Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004); the story of a young woman's quest to realize her dream of becoming a professional boxer. For this performance, she was honored with her second Academy Award for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role" and has garnered "Best Actress" prizes from the National Society of Film Critics, the Screen Actors Guild, The Broadcast Film Critics, and a Golden Globe for "Best Lead Actress in a Drama”. She was named one of "People" magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2000, 2004 and 2005.She was last seen in a supporting role opposite Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnett in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia (2006) and will next be seen starring in The Reaping (2007) for Warner Brothers. Hilary recently wrapped production on Freedom Writers (2007), the true story of Long Beach schoolteacher, Erin Gruwell. This fall, she will reunite with her Freedom Writers (2007) writer/director, Richard LaGravenese, to star in the film adaptation of Cecelia Ahern's novel, _P.S., I Love You (2008).

Biography for Hilary Swank. 1990-2009. 6 May 2009.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005476/bio

Freedom Writers "Precis" for Articles 3 & 4

ARTICLE 3

Lipka, Sara. “Eyes on the Past.” Chronicle of Higher Education 9 Feb 2007: A48-A48

The article discusses how students and administrators at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, organized a weekend trip to honor the civil-rights leaders who were part of the 1961 Freedom Rides. When Bernard LaFayette Jr. boarded a bus to Montgomery, Ala., 46 years ago, he did not store his suitcase underneath. Part of an early group of Freedom Riders, he was challenging Jim Crow laws and expected to meet violence and chaos. The least he could do to prepare, he says, was keep his suitcase with him. Just after sunrise on a Saturday late last month, four buses idle by the curb as passengers, black and white, gather on Vanderbilt Street. They place their luggage in the lower compartments and climb aboard, exchanging excited smiles as they take their seats--a freshman here, a chancellor there, and in the front row of each bus, one or two veterans of the 1961 Freedom Rides. By 8 o'clock, the Gray Lines are gently sloping south on Interstate 65. Mr. Arsenault has joined the trip, as has the Rev. James Lawson, whom Vanderbilt expelled from its divinity school in 1960 for leading nonviolence workshops to train civil-rights activists. Vanderbilt's chancellor, E. Gordon Gee, recognizes the university's shame: "Indeed we were isolated, indeed we were segregationist, and indeed we had penance to pay." Students and staff members from nearby American Baptist College and Fisk and Tennessee State Universities, including the presidents of the latter two, bring the roster to nearly 200.As the group travels to Birmingham, where the Freedom Riders were jailed, and Montgomery, where they were beaten by a mob, the veterans rotate among the buses, recounting the human details of civil-rights history. The students visited special places, monuments, and sites where the violence took place. Riding back to Nashville on Sunday evening, some students are still awestruck, describing the trip in unmatched terms: the most they have ever learned in a couple of days, the best experience they have had in college. Others count the hours of studying that await them. That is the risk, says Emily Prouty, a graduate student at Vanderbilt: "You disconnect, and the routine numbs you again."But maybe not this time. "Everybody I've talked to has recommitted to some cause in their life," Ms. Prouty says. "You pick what you care about, and you work on it."As the buses turn back onto Vanderbilt Street, students retrieve their luggage and disperse quickly into the chilly night. Some turn back and wave a second time.





ARTICLE 4

Winkler, Eugene. “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” Rev. of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, by Raymond Arsenault. Christian Century 8 Aug. 2006: 35-37

This article reviews the book, "Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice," by Raymond Arsenault.” The Freedom Riders have been through it all with their role in the Civil Rights Movement. Their role was explained wrongly in the movie Ladykillers. Tom hanks described them to a young black boy as, “a group of concerned northern liberals who came to Mississippi in 1964 "so that people like you could have the vote." The year was wrong and most of the riders to none were not northern liberals. Most of the freedom writers were black that came out of Nashville Movement that some important people had brought together. Even though they rode on buses, they have crossed the color line in public places, which later expanded to trains and airplanes, and neither the federal government nor the local authorities knew how to deal with the nonviolent frustration. A man named James Arsenault, delivered his day-to-day accounts of the rides. The rides began on May 4, 1961, when 13 activists climbed aboard buses in Washington with tickets for New Orleans. Their purpose was to challenge racial segregation in interstate travel, which the Supreme Court had declared an unconstitutional violation of human rights. Little trouble was encountered in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. However, as their journey went further into the South, hostility increased and the brutal beatings began. They were given one warning from Martin Luther King when he met them in Georgia, “You will never make it through Alabama.” They made it through Birmingham, but some were severely beaten and arrested. On July 16, 1944, Irene Morgan, a black defense worker, boarded a crowded Greyhound bus in Virginia, and when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, she was hauled off to jail. Her case provided the NAACP the opportunity to begin to take apart the Jim Crow laws that incessantly humiliated African Americans. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1946 that the segregation of passengers violated the spirit of the Constitution's interstate commerce clause, a Journey of Reconciliation was organized by Bayard Rustin and George Houser of the Congress of Racial Equality. It became the model for the 1961 tides. The Freedom Riders prevailed against all odds. "Within six months of the first Ride," Arsenault writes, "travelers of all races were sitting side by side on buses and trains 'all across the nation without fear of arrest, the WHITE and COLORED signs that had blighted the walls of Southern bus and train stations for decades were gone, the nation's major civil tights organizations had undergone significant transformations, and the Justice Department had been pushed into a deepening engagement in civil tights matters."