Hulu’s highly anticipated new documentary, Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told premieres this Thursday March 21st, 2024
Hulu’s highly anticipated new documentary, Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told will premiere this Thursday March 21st, 2024. The documentary will follow the rise and fall of the famous and infamous ‘Freaknik’, a large gathering held at the epicenter of HBCU culture, Atlanta culture, and Black culture in the 1980’s and the 1990’s. Featuring interviews from individuals such as producers Jermaine Dupri and Luke Campbell, there will be candid interviews from former attendees, the founders themselves, and several media commentators.
The premise of ‘Freaknik’ is traced back to the early 1980’s as a small picnic for students who attended several HBCUs in Atlanta, Georgia. Held during the third weekend in April to coincide with Spring Break, the original picnic was created as a space for many Black students who found themselves unwelcomed in more mainstream Spring Break locations. ‘Freaknik’ was a portmanteau of two words: ‘freak’ named after a popular dance as well as songs “Le Freak” by disco group Chic and “Super Freak” by R&B singer Rick James.
From 1983 – 1999, Freaknik became a staple in late 20th century African American culture. In an era before social media and smartphones, attendees had video camcorders, disposable cameras, and polaroid cameras to commemorate the festivities. Writer Nadra Nittle, in her 2023 article for 19th News, “Freaknik United Thousands of Black College Students, but It Posed Risks for Black Women”, writes, “Freaknik — the spelling later changed — grew beyond a picnic into a citywide bash with concerts, Greek step shows, caravans of cars and partying in the streets. It attracted over 200,000 students and other attendees by the mid-1990s before fizzling at the turn of the millennium.”
The documentary will also examine the legacy of ‘Freaknik’ – how it shaped and misshaped Black America.In a 2023 article with Revolt.tv, Dupri commented on the legacy stating,”people would move to Atlanta for Freaknik, and they stayed, and that’s how Atlanta has become this multicultural, multi-city place. Freaknik played one of the biggest roles in that period.”
But it was not without controversy. As the festival got bigger and bigger,unintended consequences such as luting,opprobrium, police standoffs, traffic jams, and sexual assault were just a present as the concerts, job fairs, and step shows. Referring back to Nadra Nittle’s article, she writes, “Freaknik stands out for uniting unprecedented numbers of Black students in revelry, giving them a sense of pride, community and solidarity, but it was not always a safe space for Black women… Now that a documentary on a major streaming service will potentially introduce millions of viewers to Freaknik, there’s no consensus in Black communities about how it should approach the sexual violence that targeted Black women attendees. For many Black scholars, feminists and activists, however, it’s not a topic the documentary should downplay.”
Acts of sexual violence in the Black community is still a taboo subject. Attacks on Black women at the hands of Black men is something that is not always reported, researched, or recounted. But many sources: academic, news, and archival video footage explicitly showcase that sexual assault was not only ‘par for the course’ as some attendees say but played a huge role in the decline of Freaknik at the turn of the 20th century.
Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told will be available for streaming Thursday March 21st, 2024 on Hulu.
