Teaching Eyes on the Prize, Teaching Democracy
Reading by Judy Richardson
It is remarkable that the 1987 Blackside Inc. documentary series, Eyes on the Prize, continues to be one of the mostly widely used documentaries on the Civil Rights Movement used in classrooms. Despite newer documentaries on key events such as Freedom Rides and Selma, teachers regularly use Eyes on the Prize as well. This is a testimony to the quality of work and vision of the Eyes producers.
We are honored to have an article about the documentary by one of those producers, Judy Richardson. Richardson was a researcher and content advisor for part one of the series, series associate producer for part two, and education director for the full 14-hour series. In addition, as a staff member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s, Richardson brought an insider’s understanding of the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
In this article, Richardson shares key insights and considerations for teachers when using the film.
Henry Hampton, founder of Boston-based Blackside Inc., with staff. © Lou Jones. Washington University Libraries, Henry Hampton Collection
Eyes on the Prize is a 14-hour series on the Civil Rights Movement produced by Blackside, Inc. It was first aired in 1987 and garnered major accolades, including an Academy Award nomination, education awards, and the top awards for journalistic excellence: the Peabody and the duPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism awards. The series has also had a second, perhaps more important life — its use in classrooms and other educational settings around the country, as confirmed by those who use the series:
Eyes on the Prize makes the concepts I teach come alive for my students. Abstract lessons about democracy have greater impact when they see real people, like themselves, fighting and dying for basic things like the right to vote. And the series really increases my kids’ sense of self-esteem. —Derrick Evans, 9th-grade social studies teacher, Boston, Massachusetts
I can stand up there and talk about democratic concepts and the responsibility we have to each other and to our society until I’m blue in the face, but these concepts become much more real when my students see them graphically played out in the series. —Cindy Henry, department chair and 11th-grade history teacher, Wilmington, North Carolina
Documentary Format
Eyes on the Prize is an historical documentary series, based on interviews and archival material. Unlike many documentaries, Blackside producers did not include any recreations; all events are represented by actual archival material from that time. Even the archival material had to be validated: If it was used to illustrate an event on a certain day, the material had to be from that exact day. Also, the series includes the voices of only the individuals who actually experienced the Movement events covered — both in support and in opposition to the Movement. No scholars were included among the interviewees (though they and their invaluable scholarship were critical to ensuring the historical accuracy of the series). The interplay between interviewee and archival footage can be seen in the 1965 Selma, Alabama segment. Here, Selma mayor Joseph Smitherman explains why he believes the Movement chose Selma for a voting rights campaign:
They picked Selma just like a movie producer would pick a set. You had the right ingredients. I mean, you had to have seen [Sheriff Jim] Clark in his day. He had a swagger stick. And then [Alabama Public Safety Director Wilson] Baker was very impressive. And I guess I was the least of all. I was 145 pounds and a crew cut and big ears.
He seems totally nonthreatening. But then, the film cuts to archival footage of Mayor Smitherman at a 1965 press conference:
Our city and our county has been subjected to the greatest pressures I think any community in the country has had to withstand. We’ve had in our area here outside agitation groups of all levels. We’ve had Martin Luther Coon … pardon me, sir, I mean Martin Luther King.
Narrator Julian Bond explains why citizen mobilization was necessary: “More than half of Dallas County’s citizens were Black. But less than one percent was registered by 1965. Throughout much of the South, custom and law had long prevented Blacks from registering.” Sheyann Webb, then only 9 years old, remembers the bravery of her teachers: “It was amazing to see how many teachers had participated. I remember vividly on that day when I saw my teachers marching with me, you know, just for the right to vote.” Film footage shows the courage of those teachers confronting violence as they line up to register to vote.
Eventually, in a monumental display of conscience, thousands of Americans of every race and religion traveled to Selma to bear witness. In a present-day interview, the Rev. C. T. Vivian comments:
It was clear engagement between those who wished the fullness of their personalities to be met, and those that would destroy us physically and psychologically. You do not walk away from that. This is what Movement meant. Movement meant that finally we were encountering, on a mass scale, the evil that had been destroying us on a mass scale. You do not walk away from that; you continue to answer it.
Brief Description
The series is divided into two parts, Eyes I and Eyes II. Each hour-long program is divided into two or three 20- to 30-minute stories, allowing for class discussion within most school schedules.
The first part includes six one-hour segments, beginning with Emmett Till’s murder and ending with the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. In order, it portrays: the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till and the Montgomery Bus Boycott; the 1954 Supreme Court decision and the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; the student sit-ins and freedom rides; the Southwest Georgia movement, the Birmingham demonstrations and church bombing, and the 1963 March on Washington; and the Mississippi movement, focused on the bravery of local leaders, such as Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer, and the voting rights campaign of 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, when the murder of three civil rights workers becomes national news. Eyes I ends with the historic Selma to Montgomery March.
The second part continues with eight hour-long segments, beginning with a portrait of Malcolm X and the cry for Black Power in 1966, and ending with the 1983 election of Mayor Harold Washington in Chicago. Eyes II documents, in order: Malcolm X and Black Power; the attempt by Dr. King’s SCLC to organize protests against segregated housing in Chicago, and the Detroit rebellions set within the context of the racist abuses that existed in that city; the election of the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city, the rise of the Black Panthers in Oakland, and the attempts at community control of schools in New York City; the last year of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, focused on his anti-Vietnam War opposition and economic justice campaigns; the battles Muhammad Ali faced both inside and outside the ring, and the student takeover of Howard University in 1968; the police assassination of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, and the systemic roots of those murders, together with the Attica prison revolt; the Boston busing school desegregation crisis and the press for affirmative action, as seen through the election of Atlanta’s first African American mayor; and the election of Harold Washington.
Themes
Throughout the 14 hours of the series, the following major themes emerge:
The Civil Rights Movement was a primary force for the expansion of democracy for all.
The Movement was based on the work of thousands of ordinary people who both organized and sustained it.
The Movement emphasized our responsibility to each other.
The Movement was based on humane values that brought out the best in everyone involved.
The Movement was not simply a series of spontaneous demonstrations — it was often carefully planned and executed.
The long history of African American protest, both individual and organized, is the context for the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Women were both the leaders and the troops of the Movement.
1. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT WAS A PRIMARY FORCE FOR THE EXPANSION OF DEMOCRACY FOR ALL.
The issues raised by the Movement — political, economic, and social — continue to be relevant. A segment in Eyes II, for example, chronicles Dr. King’s last year. The story demonstrates that he, and the Movement as a whole, began to actively organize around economic equity, becoming more vocal about disparities, not just between Black and white, but also between rich and poor, regardless of race. Archival footage of Dr. King preaching in a church about the need for “a radical redistribution of economic power” is powerful. Linda Nathan, a teacher at Fenway Middle College High School in Boston, builds on this relationship between the Movement and the problems students confront today: “We can take off from Eyes to discuss current problems — everything from homelessness to unemployment to racism. Eyes helps students see that our history is not yet completed, that these issues are still alive and will remain with us until we actively deal with them.” (interview with author, April 15, 1990)
2. THE MOVEMENT WAS BASED ON THE WORK OF THOUSANDS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE WHO BOTH ORGANIZED AND SUSTAINED IT.
Eyes shows that the Movement included not only Dr. King, but also many “ordinary” people — people just like them, their parents, teachers, and peers — who initiated and sustained the Movement. Eyes teaches the undeniable power of one person — or group of people united — to create a more just world. Until students understand this, they will not see themselves in this history.
One of the most moving Eyes segments is the opening story about the lynching of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicagoan who was killed in Mississippi in 1955 for, possibly, saying “Hey, baby” to a white female store owner. Several aspects of this story are riveting for students: as teenagers, they can relate to young Till; Till’s trial takes place in a courtroom filled with powerful white men, all of whom support the murderers; and Till’s grand-uncle shows great courage in testifying against the murderers in open court. It is the courage of that lone individual — standing up for what is right no matter what the cost — that stays with the viewer.
Throughout the series, people act at great personal risk to change conditions for the better. While the series helps students become aware of the long, anti-racist struggle for human rights, it also shows numerous agents of change as being no different from the students themselves.
Young people also see themselves as leaders and key players in that movement. When I showed the Birmingham segment to 9th-grade students in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the reaction was absolute silence. The image of rows and rows of students resolutely marching into the dark tunnel that led to the Birmingham jail — while narration notes that over 700 students were arrested that day — had the students’ total attention. This segment provoked a discussion of choices: Why students at that time chose to take that action when they could have sat on the sidelines. Whether the students in the class would have joined the Birmingham demonstrations, and on what issues they would be willing to take action today.
3. THE MOVEMENT EMPHASIZED OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO EACH OTHER, AND TO FUTURE GENERATIONS.
It was commonly understood by those involved in the Movement that they were not just struggling for themselves, they were struggling for their communities and for the next generation (in the same way that others had prepared the way for them). E. D. Nixon, a long-time Montgomery leader, says in the Montgomery Boycott segment: “When I first started fighting, I was fighting . . . so that the children who came behind me wouldn’t suffer the same thing I suffered.”
Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi sharecropper and courageous Movement organizer, appears in the Mississippi segment of Eyes. She was thrown off the plantation where she worked because she tried to register to vote. When she and her family moved into town with friends, that house was shot into 16 times, barely missing the occupants. Later, she and others were brutally beaten in a Winona, Miss., jail when they sat on the “whites only” side of the Greyhound bus terminal on their way home from a voter education workshop in South Carolina. Hamer became a powerful symbol of resistance, particularly after she spoke at the nationally televised hearings during the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, where she demanded of the delegates: “Is This America?” She once said: “We just got to stand up now as Negroes, for ourselves, and for our freedom. And if it don’t do me any good, I do know the young people it will do good.”
Within the context of responsibility, students can discuss the role of nonviolence — both as a philosophy and as a tactic. Students will see leaders in Eyes who believed in nonviolence as a philosophy: Dr. King and most members of his staff, as well as the Rev. James Lawson, who greatly influenced the students of the Nashville sit-in movement, including John Lewis, who became SNCC’s chair. For those upholding the philosophy of nonviolence, to meet violence with violence would mean they had descended to the level of those they opposed. They believed that the morality upon which the Movement was based mandated aspiring to a higher purpose — that once a violent response occurred, no cap could be put on the higher and higher levels of violence that would result.
Other Movement activists, however, saw nonviolence primarily as a tactic. This included many SNCC staff workers, such as Stokely Carmichael, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, and James Forman, as well as local leaders such as Mississippi’s Laura McGhee and Hartman Turnbow. An African American landowner in Holmes County, Turnbow protected his home with a 12-gauge shotgun.
For these activists it became clear: Given the reality of unbridled domestic terrorism that existed in much of the South, nonviolence was the only practical course. It was absurd to think about retaliation when the entire state government machinery was amassed against you, and the FBI was directed by J. Edgar Hoover, who actively sought to undermine or destroy the movement, including Dr. King. It was also irresponsible to consider a violent response when you were responsible for more than yourself. Your primary responsibility as an organizer was the well-being of the community and being able to continue to organize around basic human rights issues. Both would be put in serious jeopardy if the Movement returned violence with violence.
Some students today may have difficulty accepting the philosophy of nonviolence practiced by demonstrators as they are being violently attacked. This concept may be made more understandable by examining what was possible, what was at stake, the larger goals of the movement, and the responsibility civil rights workers had to their communities.
4. THE MOVEMENT WAS BASED ON HUMANE VALUES THAT BROUGHT OUT THE BEST IN EACH INDIVIDUAL INVOLVED.
The moral basis of the Movement is evident throughout Eyes, particularly in showing the lens through which the Movement looked at certain issues. Participants talk about the moral basis of the struggle even when they become involved in the political arena, where morality and politics can seem to be a contradiction in terms.
5. THE MOVEMENT WAS NOT SIMPLY A SERIES OF SPONTANEOUS DEMONSTRATIONS — IT WAS OFTEN CAREFULLY PLANNED AND EXECUTED.
The general representation of the Movement in archival news footage was one of protests that seemed to spring spontaneously from a mere whim. Refuting this ahistorical view, the series continuously emphasizes the high degree of planning, organization, and constant discussion that were necessary to build an effective movement. The series thus helps break down common stereotypes of the African American community.
6. A LONG HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN PROTEST, BOTH INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZED, GROUNDS THE MODERN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.
A question frequently asked by students is, “Why did it take so long?” It’s important that students recognize that African American resistance has always existed and that it did not just begin in the 1960s. Eyes on the Prize vividly shows what the movement was up against, as well as the many ways it organized to fight back, even before the sit-ins.
Dr. Vincent Harding likens the theme of resistance to a river of struggle coursing through African American history. We see this clearly in the Birmingham segment, where we learn that Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth had been working to desegregate “public” facilities, even before Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference arrived in Birmingham. In addition, Dr. Robin D. G. Kelly notes that in 1941–42 there were more than 50 recorded incidents of protest by African American bus riders in Birmingham against segregated seating.
Eyes on the Prize helps teachers address difficult race-related issues, which are often sublimated but sometimes surface explosively and unexpectedly. Teachers may find that students are somewhat more comfortable discussing these issues after seeing Eyes, because it is based on events from the past. These historical events can provide a platform for a broader discussion, but only after an environment of trust and respect has been established in the classroom.
In addition, teachers often find that students do not believe some of this history, as presented in textbooks or other academic writing, until they see it for themselves, in archival footage in Eyes on the Prize. Students also tend to think many of these events happened a long time ago . . . until it becomes real and immediate through experiencing it in Eyes.
It is therefore important to emphasize to students that these are not actors reading a script, but real people marching, going to jail, and fighting for their rights. Understanding the current relevance of these events helps them understand that attempts will often be made to roll back the gains of earlier movements. However, the strength and intelligence they witness — by young people like themselves and by others — helps empower them to resist these attempts, while also giving them important tools from earlier movements.
Professor James McLeod, who uses Eyes in his classes at Washington University in St. Louis, notes, “The power of the series is not so much in the events, as in the people whose courage and commitment it chronicles.” Eyes puts a face on these events; it brings to life pieces of history that textbooks often render static and lifeless, if they cover them at all. The strength of Eyes is that it powerfully shows not only how the Civil Rights Movement transformed a country, but how it transformed all who were a part of it. It called on them to be the best that they could be. What better lesson can we teach our children?
© 1992 Social Education. Excerpted and reprinted with permission from Judy Richardson, “Teaching Eyes on the Prize: Teaching Democracy,” Social Education (Oct. 1992). Updated by Richardson in 2019.