(BLOOMINGTON) - Students at Batchelor Middle School took the top prize in the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes 2014 international Discovery Award competition.
Phoebe Rensink, Mia Trueblood and Andrew Baxter, students in Jeff Rudkin's video production class, won the award and $1,000 for their documentary "Hank Thomas: Freedom Rider."
Thomas was one of the original Freedom Riders who traveled through the South on Greyhound buses in 1961, protesting segregated facilities at bus stations along the way.
They met with much violence, including mob beatings and firebombing, and wound up in Mississippi's infamous Parchman Prison.
Today, Thomas is a millionaire businessman in Atlanta, where he owns several fast food franchises - friends call him "Mr. McDonald's".
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