Oprah Winfrey was born to a single mother in Mississippi in 1954. That was 10 years before Mississippi Freedom Summer and that infamous Mississippi burning incident. Today she’s worth almost 3 billion dollars.

Yet her record-breaking show, Oprah, drew more whites than blacks. In fact, 80% of her audiences were white women. The show boosted sales for countless authors with Oprah’s Book Club and made several small business owners very well off  with Oprah’s Favorite Things.  Were there many black authors and entrepreneurs in Oprah’s offerings? Nope. Apparently Ms. Winfrey doesn’t believe in just ‘buying black’ like some in the African American community.

Oprah has addressed sexual abuse, weight loss, sexual orientation, and even taken on Texas beef producers. I mean really, only one woman can mess with Texas.

But it seems she has never truly addressed racism. Some would say that she has somehow become a non-black. Yes, she grew up in the American Deep South during the Civil Rights struggle. And yes, she does have kinky hair and brown skin. But the distinctions stop there.

To be black in America is still closer to words like marginalized, disenfranchised, and at-risk. And Oprah is far from any of those. Thankfully, she reaches out to the ‘least of these’ but she has not, with her vast fortune and immense influence, spoken out against the ingrained systems of American racism or classism.

Perhaps in some ways she stayed clear of racism because it is, even almost 50 years of Civil Rights legislation, still a powder keg of rage and regret. Perhaps even she noticed the lack of genuine connection she had with black Americans, especially black women.

Would her words have made American racism vanish? No. Not even Oprah’s billions can make that monster go away. But I do wonder what would have happened if she had given it the same attention as she did so many issues on her 25-year-old talk show.

What do you think?

Fifty years ago on May 5, seven black students and six whites boarded a bus in Washington, DC. They were on their way to New Orleans, protesting the unjust practices of segregation in the American South. The law said that interstate bus travel was to be integrated–equal access to seating on the bus, in waiting rooms, lunch counters, and restrooms. In the traditionally brutal segregated South of the 1960s, not everybody agreed with that law. That first trip to New Orleans was anything but uneventful.

The Freedom Riders struggle lasted into September 1961. Several waves of students participated in the Rides–hundreds were jailed, in fact. They rode from every corner of the nation, mostly converging on Jackson, MS. Vicious mob attacks and bus fires didn’t deter them. The initial lack of support from the the Kennedys (President and Senator), US government, and even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  didn’t bring their movement to a stop.  The Riders were dogmatic, willing to keep riding until they were free to ride. Until we were all free to pursue life and happiness and liberty.

It was an unprecedented interracial David and Goliath story. An impossible war from many vantage points. But they fought it nontheless. They were determined to finish what they started. Most notable Freedom Riders were Stokely Carmichael, James L. Farmer, Jr., now US Representative John Lewis (D-GA), Diane Nash,  and James Zwerg.

I stayed up late and watched the American Experience “Freedom Riders” documentary on PBS, like a good American. I also tweeted the event, meaning I posted my reactions on Twitter. Many others did. In fact, the tweets were coming in so fast that they were impossible to read.

This morning, I revisited the Twitter conversations and found a common thread of awe and indebtedness. Many were moved to tears. Some were inspired to make commitments to change, to make a difference 50 years later. It seems you can say a lot in only 140 characters at a time. One tweeter wondered how different the civil rights struggle could have been with online tools like Twitter. An interesting thought indeed.

What was my takeaway? A high price was paid for freedom, which was the case in many of the battles in the war for freedom in the South. But I also saw that politics and freedom don’t mix well. The Kennedys politics tied their hands. Dr. King’s politics made him falter. In some ways politics, both person and corporate, made matters worse.

It was the determination for change that stuck. On Twitter last night, some called the Riders fools. Some called them heros. Truth is, in the end they were flawed and fearless. And they were free.

Other Resources on the Freedom Riders:

• PBS Freedom Riders promo video
• Short film about Diane Nash
• Shop PBS
• Stories on PBS affiliate WGBH