‘Freaknik’ doc reveals how Atlanta’s iconic spring break blowout became ‘the greatest black gathering in America’

nypost.com:

Jermaine Dupri. “Somebody had to do it.”But beyond all the booty-shaking before “twerking” was even a word, the “Me So Horny” rapper sums up the cultural impact that made Freaknik — as Atlanta rapper Lil Jon describes — “the greatest black gathering in America.”“It was our Woodstock,” says Campbell. “They had their Woodstock, it was ours.

We was just having a good f—king time.”“I’ve been telling folks that this documentary is really about black joy — young black people finding themselves in a world that didn’t really sort of make room for them,” “Freaknik” director P.

Frank Williams told The Post.“That’s why they created Freaknik as their own sort of version of Daytona Beach, and so …this documentary celebrates black joy, black liberation, black economics, black freedom, even black sexuality.”The documentary — which began streaming on Thursday after premiering at the South by Southwest Festival earlier this month — traces how Freaknik began as a picnic in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park in 1983.It was founded by a group of students at the Atlanta University Center — which united enrollees at HBCUs Morehouse College, Superman College and Clark Atlanta University — as an alternative for those who were staying on campus during spring break, many because they couldn’t afford to go home.“So we said, ‘Let’s plan a picnic.

We’re going to have a picnic during spring break,’ ” says Amadi Boon, one of the Freaknik founders, in the doc.And the combination of “freak” and “picnic” that gave the event its name had much more innocent intentions than it might suggest, harking back to the party energy of Chic’s 1978 disco classic “Le Freak.”“People think that the ‘freak’ is freaky, but when we were doing the ‘freak,’ it wasn’t scandalous, but it.