50 Fun Facts About Freedom Writers

Which two-time Oscar winner, the star of Million Dollar Baby, plays Erin Gruwell in Freedom Writers?

Hilary Swank won her Best Actress Oscars for Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby before taking the role of the real-life teacher. Two years later she played another real woman, Amelia Earhart.

The Freedom Writers' name honors the Freedom Riders, who challenged segregation in 1961 on what?

Interstate buses carried the mixed-race Freedom Riders into the South to test court rulings against segregated travel. Gruwell's students swapped one word of the name to make it their own.

In Freedom Writers, department head Margaret Campbell warns Erin Gruwell against wearing what to class?

A pearl necklace draws a compliment from Margaret Campbell, then a warning. The exchange shows early on how little the school expects of the students Erin is about to meet.

Pat Carroll, who plays a real wartime rescuer in Freedom Writers, was the voice of which Disney villain?

Ursula, the sea witch of The Little Mermaid, got her voice from Pat Carroll in 1989. In Freedom Writers she plays the elderly guest of honor who tells Erin Gruwell's students they are the heroes.

Which Shakespeare play did Erin Gruwell teach her Freedom Writers by comparing its conflict to a gang war?

Romeo and Juliet became a story about rival gangs in Gruwell's hands. She also asked her students to keep journals and to make movies about their own lives.

Which Steven Spielberg film did the real Erin Gruwell take her first class of students to see?

Schindler's List was Gruwell's answer when a student asked her what the Holocaust was. She also bought new books out of her own pocket and invited guest speakers.

Which Grey's Anatomy star plays Erin Gruwell's increasingly unhappy husband in Freedom Writers?

Patrick Dempsey took the part at the height of his fame as Dr. Derek Shepherd. His character feels sidelined by Erin's devotion to her class, and the marriage ends in divorce.

Which career had Erin Gruwell planned before the 1992 Los Angeles riots persuaded her to teach?

Lawyer was the plan until she watched the riots unfold on the news. She decided she could do more good in a classroom, before trouble started, than in a courtroom afterwards.

Which future Dolores Umbridge actress plays Erin Gruwell's hostile department head in Freedom Writers?

Imelda Staunton plays Margaret Campbell, who scorns Erin's unusual teaching methods. Her first Harry Potter film reached cinemas later the same year.

Freedom Writers opens with footage of which man, whose beating by police led to the 1992 riots?

Rodney King was beaten by officers in 1991, and the riots began within hours of their acquittal the next spring. The film is set two years later, with the tension still in Erin's classroom.

Freedom Writers is set at a high school in which coastal California city south of Los Angeles?

Long Beach is home to one of the busiest container ports in the United States. The real school in the story sits about a mile and a half from the Pacific.

The high school where Erin Gruwell taught the Freedom Writers is named after which US president?

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president, gave his name to the school when it was established in 1925. Its students chose the nickname Bruins a year later.

Which Freedom Writers classroom exercise shows Erin Gruwell's students how much pain they share?

The line game brings students to stand together whenever they share an experience, such as losing a friend to violence. After it, the divided class starts to grow closer.

In Freedom Writers, which Dutch woman who helped hide Anne Frank do the students raise money to bring to class?

Miep Gies kept Anne Frank's diary safe after the family's arrest and lived to the age of 100. The real Freedom Writers paid for her visit to California with a fundraiser of their own.

Which Freedom Writers student shocks a courtroom by naming the real gunman instead of protecting her own gang?

Eva Benitez had been raised to protect her own, whatever the truth. Her testimony clears a wrongly accused classmate, and she has to move in with her aunt for safety.

Which Los Angeles institution do Erin Gruwell's students visit on a required field trip in Freedom Writers?

The Museum of Tolerance focuses on the Holocaust and on prejudice around the world. Erin also invites survivors to talk with her class about what they lived through.

Freedom Writers student Sindy Ngor came to California as a refugee from which Southeast Asian country?

Cambodia is the country Sindy Ngor's family fled before settling in California. In the film her boyfriend is killed by a bullet meant for another student.

Which ritual opens sophomore year in Freedom Writers, with each of Erin Gruwell's students vowing to start over?

Toast for Change lets every student say aloud what they struggle with and what they want to be different. The real Gruwell held hers in the fall of 1995 and saw a turnaround in her class.

In Freedom Writers, what pays for the extra books and activities Erin Gruwell wants for her class?

Two part-time jobs on top of teaching cover the cost and keep Erin away from home even more. Her husband is hurt that she took them on without asking him.

In Freedom Writers, what does Erin Gruwell seize from a student that turns her lesson in an unplanned direction?

A racist drawing of a classmate is what she seizes. Erin uses it to teach about the Holocaust, and finds that almost none of her students know what that was.

In Freedom Writers, which gang member fires the shot that kills Sindy Ngor's boyfriend while aiming at Grant Rice?

Paco was settling a score from a school brawl when he fired. He misses his target and kills a bystander, and an innocent classmate is arrested for the shooting.

In Freedom Writers, Erin Gruwell's husband has abandoned his dream of becoming what?

An architect is what he once hoped to be. Feeling overshadowed by Erin's accomplishments in the classroom, he ends the marriage.

In Freedom Writers, whom does Erin Gruwell finally persuade to let her keep her class for junior and senior years?

The superintendent overrules the department head, who had told Erin she could not teach the class as juniors. The students are elated at the news.

In Freedom Writers, where does the shooting take place that leaves Grant Rice wrongly accused of murder?

A convenience store is the scene: Grant storms out after demanding his money back from an arcade machine, and a bullet meant for him hits someone else.

Which R&B singer, known for the hit Let Me Love You, plays student Andre Bryant in Freedom Writers?

Mario had topped the Billboard Hot 100 with that single before turning to acting. He appeared in the dance film Step Up the year before Freedom Writers reached cinemas.

Which actor from The Silence of the Lambs and The Right Stuff plays Erin Gruwell's father in Freedom Writers?

Scott Glenn plays Steve Gruwell, a former civil rights activist who encourages his daughter to fight to keep her class. Deleted scenes on the DVD give his character more depth.

Which screenwriter of The Fisher King and The Bridges of Madison County wrote and directed Freedom Writers?

Richard LaGravenese earned an Oscar nomination for writing The Fisher King. The son of a Brooklyn taxi driver, he trained as an actor before turning to scripts.

Which Twins and Taxi actor was a producer of Freedom Writers through his company Jersey Films?

Danny DeVito co-founded Jersey Films in 1991, and it also made Pulp Fiction and Erin Brockovich. He is one of three credited producers on Freedom Writers.

Which rapper's 1993 single Keep Ya Head Up is heard on the Freedom Writers soundtrack?

Tupac Shakur released the song the year before the film's story begins. Most of the soundtrack is hip hop from the early 1990s, matching the years the story covers.

Which Chicago rapper recorded a new single for the Freedom Writers soundtrack with a Black Eyed Peas star?

Common released the track as a single from the film's soundtrack in 2006. Its music video mixes scenes from the movie with images of the civil rights movement.

Zlata's Diary, which Erin Gruwell assigned to her Freedom Writers, records a girl's life under siege in which city?

Sarajevo was Zlata Filipović's home, and her diary follows the war closing in on it. She later visited Gruwell's students in California, which inspired them to write about their own lives.

Which part of The Freedom Writers Diary was written by Zlata Filipović, the young wartime diarist the class had read?

The foreword came from Filipović, by then living in Ireland, whose own journal the students had studied. Gruwell herself wrote the introductions to the students' entries.

Anne Frank's diary, which the Freedom Writers studied, was written while hiding in a secret annex in which city?

Amsterdam is where the Frank family hid from 1942 until their arrest in 1944. Gruwell's students learned to see parallels between the diary and their own lives.

Night, a Holocaust memoir that Erin Gruwell's students read alongside Anne Frank's diary, was written by whom?

Elie Wiesel based Night on what he and his father went through in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Gruwell picked books written by and about teenagers in wartime.

Student protests against which 1994 California ballot measure disrupted Erin Gruwell's first fall with her own class?

Proposition 187 sought to bar undocumented immigrants from public schools and non-emergency health care. Latino students across California walked out of class in protest before the vote.

The Freedom Writers met Richard Riley, who held which post in President Bill Clinton's Cabinet?

Secretary of Education was Riley's post for all eight Clinton years. The meeting was one sign of how far the students' story had spread, along with coverage in People magazine.

Erin Gruwell's father, who shaped her belief in equality, worked as a scout in which professional sport?

Baseball was Stephen Gruwell's world: he scouted for the Anaheim Angels. He taught his daughter to judge a batter by his swing and not by the color of his skin.

Which memoir did Erin Gruwell publish about her own experience around the time the Freedom Writers film came out?

Teach with Your Heart is subtitled Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers. Gruwell had left her high school classroom in 1998, after only four years of teaching.

In which state was a teacher suspended in 2008 for using The Freedom Writers Diary against her school board's wishes?

Indiana teacher Connie Heermann was suspended without pay for a year and a half. Administrators at her Indianapolis high school objected to racial slurs and sexual content in parts of the book.

A 2019 documentary about Erin Gruwell and the original Freedom Writers aired on which US television network?

PBS showed the documentary twenty years after the students' book first appeared, and a dozen years after the Hollywood version of their story.

The real Freedom Writers paid for a famous guest speaker's trip from the Netherlands with which kind of fundraiser?

A read-a-thon, which the class called the Read-a-thon for Tolerance, raised the money. Their guest flew to California and met the students in person.

Tracey Durning's report on Erin Gruwell for which ABC news magazine planted the idea for the Freedom Writers film?

Primetime Live aired Durning's documentary about the teacher. She went on to serve as co-executive producer of the film it inspired.

Which singer's party anthem This Is How We Do It features on the Freedom Writers soundtrack?

Montell Jordan released the song in 1995 as his debut single. It sits on the album beside tracks by Cypress Hill, Gang Starr and Digable Planets.

Which hip hop group's 1993 single Hip Hop Hooray appears on the Freedom Writers soundtrack?

Naughty by Nature released the song as the first single from their third album. One member of the group has called it their unofficial hip-hop anthem.

Hunter Parrish, one of the students in Freedom Writers, was already playing Silas Botwin in which Showtime series?

Weeds had made Parrish's name from 2005, two years before Freedom Writers. In the film he plays the only white student in a California high school class.

Which cable channel, famous for music videos, put its film label behind Freedom Writers?

MTV Films is credited on the picture alongside Jersey Films. The year before its release, the label had become part of the Paramount Motion Pictures Group.

Zlata Filipović, whose wartime journal Erin Gruwell's students read, gave her diary which name?

Mimmy was the diary's name from 1991 to 1993, the years she kept it. Her family escaped to Paris in 1993 and later settled in Dublin.

Which trumpeter and film composer wrote new music for Freedom Writers alongside will.i.am?

Mark Isham made his professional debut on trumpet at the age of 12. He has scored more than 200 film and television productions.

John Tu, a benefactor of the Freedom Writers Foundation, co-founded which technology company?

Kingston Technology co-founder John Tu supports a foundation that trains teachers in Gruwell's methods, with the aim of cutting high school dropout rates.

The hip hop single recorded for the Freedom Writers soundtrack samples a famous speech by which civil rights leader?

Martin Luther King's best-known speech supplies the hook of the song. Television footage of him delivering it appears throughout the music video.