American civil rights movement documentary TV series
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement
is an American
television series
and 14-part
documentary
about the 20th-century
civil rights movement
in the United States.
[1]
The documentary originally aired on the
PBS
network, and it also aired in the United Kingdom on
BBC2
. Created and executive produced by
Henry Hampton
at his film production company Blackside, and narrated by
Julian Bond
, the series uses
archival footage
, stills, and interviews by participants and opponents of the movement. The title of the series is derived from the title of the
folk song
"
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
", which is used as the opening theme music in each episode.
The series won a number of
Emmy Awards
,
Peabody Awards
, and was nominated for an
Oscar
.
A total of 14 episodes of
Eyes on the Prize
were produced in two separate parts. The first part,
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954?1965
, chronicles the time period between the
United States Supreme Court
ruling
Brown v. Board of Education
(1954) and the
Selma to Montgomery marches
of 1965. It consists of six episodes, which premiered on January 21, 1987, and concluded on February 25, 1987. The second part,
Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965?1985
, chronicles the time period from the national emergence of
Malcolm X
in 1964 to the 1983 election of
Harold Washington
as the first African-American mayor of
Chicago
. It consists of eight episodes, which aired on January 15, 1990 and ended on March 5, 1990. The documentary was made widely available to educators on VHS tape. All 14 hours were re-released on DVD in 2006 by PBS.
Broadcast
[
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]
The film originated as two sequential projects. Part one, six hours long, was shown on
PBS
in early 1987 as
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954?1965
. Eight more hours were broadcast in 1990 as
Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965?1985
.
In 1992, the documentary was released on home video. By the mid-1990s, both rebroadcasts and home video distribution were halted for several years due to expiration of rights and licenses of copyrighted archive footage, photographs and music used in the series. Copyright holders were demanding increasingly higher rates.
[2]
Grants from the
Ford Foundation
and Gilder Foundation enabled Blackside and the rights clearance team to renew rights in 2005.
[3]
While the return of
Eyes on the Prize
to public television and the educational market depended on the contributions of many, four individuals in particular are credited with achieving the complicated undertaking of rights renewals and the re-release of the series: Sandra Forman, Legal Counsel and Project Director; Cynthia Meagher Kuhn, Archivist and Rights Coordinator; Rena Kosersky, Music Supervisor; and Judi Hampton, President of Blackside and sister of Henry Hampton. None of the archival material in the fourteen-hour documentary was removed or altered in any way.
PBS rebroadcast the first six hours on
American Experience
on three consecutive Mondays in October 2006,
[4]
and rebroadcast the second eight hours in February 2008.
[5]
After a gap of almost eight years,
Eyes on the Prize
was rebroadcast on
World Channel
on fourteen consecutive Sundays beginning on January 17, 2016.
PBS reissued an educational version of the series in the fall of 2006, making it available on DVD for the first time.
[6]
It is now available to educational institutions and libraries from PBS on seven DVDs or seven VHS tapes. A consumer version of part one (1954?1965) was released in March 2010.
[7]
The licensing issues from 1993 to 2006 generated what was called
Eyes on the Screen
, an effort to disseminate the series by
file sharing networks
without regard to copyright restrictions.
Episodes
[
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]
America's Civil Rights Years 1954?1965
[
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]
America at the Racial Crossroads 1965?1985
[
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]
Book
[
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]
The book
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954?1965
was created as a companion volume to the series during post-production by the producers and publishing staff at Blackside, Inc. They were assisted by
Juan Williams
, a journalist with
The Washington Post
. First published by
Viking Press
in 1987, the book used a portion of the iconic photograph of the
Selma to Montgomery march
taken by
Look
magazine
photographer
James Karales
on its cover.
[8]
Reception
[
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]
The series has been hailed by numerous critics
[9]
[10]
as more than just a historical document.
Awards
[
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]
Both
Eyes on the Prize
and
Eyes on the Prize II
won
Peabody Awards
and
Alfred I. duPont?Columbia University Awards
.
[11]
[12]
[13]
The series also won six
Emmy Awards
.
[14]
Episode six,
Bridge to Freedom
, produced by
Callie Crossley
and James A. DeVinney, was nominated for an
Academy Award
for
Best Documentary Feature
in 1988 during the
60th Academy Awards
.
[15]
[16]
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
DVD Talk
- ^
Sheila Curran Bernard, "Eyes on the Rights - The Rising Cost of Putting History on Screen"
,
Documentary Online Magazine,
June 05 Issue, International Documentary Association. Retrieved 2021-6-27.
- ^
Katie Dean (August 30, 2005),
"Cash Rescues Eyes on the Prize"
,
Wired.com
, archived from
the original
on December 31, 2006
, retrieved
February 21,
2008
.
- ^
A Special Presentation of American Experience: Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement, 1954?1985
, PBS.org. Retrieved 2008-02-21.
- ^
PBS News: PBS Celebrates Black History Month with an Extensive Lineup of Special Programming
, PBS.org. Retrieved 2008-02-21.
- ^
PBS Education - Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement DVD 7PK - AV Item
- ^
"Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965 (Season 1) DVD"
.
PBS
. Retrieved
September 30,
2021
.
- ^
Williams, Juan (2013).
Eyes on the prize : America's civil rights years, 1954-1965. 25th anniversary ed
. New York: Penguin Books.
ISBN
978-0-14-312474-0
.
OCLC
857233580
.
- ^
Goodman, Walter (January 22, 1987).
"TV Reviews; 'Eyes on the Prize, on Rights"
.
The New York Times
.
ISSN
0362-4331
.
- ^
Unger, Arthur (January 20, 1987).
"
'Eyes on the Prize': reliving the civil rights struggle"
.
Christian Science Monitor
.
ISSN
0882-7729
.
- ^
"Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years"
.
The Peabody Awards
. Retrieved
March 2,
2019
.
- ^
"Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads (1965-1985)"
.
The Peabody Awards
. Retrieved
March 2,
2019
.
- ^
"The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards"
.
Columbia Journalism School
. Archived from
the original
on December 22, 2017
. Retrieved
March 2,
2019
.
- ^
Blake, Meredith (January 17, 2016).
"Landmark civil rights documentary 'Eyes on the Prize' returns to TV"
.
Los Angeles Times
.
- ^
"
1988
", Oscars.org.
- ^
"The Ten-Year Lunch Wins Documentary Feature: 1988 Oscars"
.
YouTube
. April 11, 1988.
Further reading
[
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]
- Boucher, Norman (1990). "The Vision of Henry Hampton: Eyes on the Prize I and II".
The World: Journal of the Unitarian Universalist Association
.
4
(1): 8?11.
- Carson, Clayborne
(1991).
The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle, 1954-1990
. Viking Penguin Books.
ISBN
9780140154030
.
- DeMarco, David (Summer 1987). "Keep Your Eyes on Henry Hampton, Creator Readies Eyes on the Prize".
Black Film Review
.
3
(3): 14?15.
- Else, Jon
(2017).
True South: Henry Hampton and Eyes on the Prize, the Landmark Television Series That Reframed the Civil Rights Movement
. Penguin Publishing Group.
ISBN
9781101980934
.
- G'Schwind, James A. (1999).
Eyes on the Prize: American Historiophoty in Documentary Film
(Ph.D. dissertation). Indiana University.
OCLC
56509312
.
- Hadley, Elizabeth Amelia (1999). "Eyes on the Prize: Reclaiming Black Images, Culture, and History". In Klotman, Phyllis Rauch; Cutler, Janet K. (eds.).
Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video
. Indiana University Press. pp.
99
?121.
ISBN
9780253213471
.
- Hampton, Henry
; Fayer, Steve (2011).
Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s
. Random House Publishing Group.
ISBN
9780307574183
.
External links
[
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]
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Events
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timeline
)
| Prior to 1954
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1954?1959
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1960?1963
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1964?1968
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Activist
groups
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Activists
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By region
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Movement
songs
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Influences
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Related
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Legacy
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Noted
historians
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1980s
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1990s
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2000s
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2010s
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2020s
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