Photo: Civil Rights March on Washington, DC, August 28, 1963. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration
Eyes on the Prize, the definitive documentary series on the American Civil Rights Movement, is finally coming out on DVD this Tuesday, April 6. The series, which aired on PBS in 1987 to universal acclaim and is currently airing on consecutive Thursdays this month, covers the period from 1954, the year of the murder of Emmett Till and the Montgomery bus boycott, to 1965, the year of the Selma-to-Montgomery march and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
The late Henry Hampton created and executive-produced this monumental project through his Boston-based production company, Blackside, Inc.; although there had been documentaries on the Civil Rights Movement before, no one had ever tackled something of this scope and magnitude. The series went on to win six Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award and a DuPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. In addition, Hampton earned an IDA Career Achievement Award in 1997, among many other honors, and passed away a year later.
Among the many Blackside alums who worked on Eyes on the Prize in various capacities include Orlando Bagwell, Jon Else, Sam Pollard, Michael Chin, Bob Richman and Laurie Kahn-Levitt. Bagwell, now director of the media, arts and culture division at the Ford Foundation, was instrumental in helping to secure the funding to clear the music and footage rights, which had expired in the early 2000s.
Blackside also produced Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads (1965-1985), which aired in the early 1990s. The artistic personnel of that series included Lillian Benson, Paul Stekler, Louis Massiah, Carroll Blue and Noland Walker. The rights on that series, however, are still unsecured.
Sheila Curran Benson, who produced, directed and wrote two of the episodes in Eyes on the Prize, wrote an article for the June 2005 issue of Documentary magazine about the long struggle to clear the rights to the series. For more on the series itself, click here.
On a sad note, Steve Ascher, whose wife and filmmaking partner, Jeanne Jordan, edited one of the episodes in Eyes on the Prize, reports that Robert Lavelle, who was vice president of Blackside, Inc. and was the driving force behind and editor of the Eyes on the Prize companion volumes, passed away on March 27. He had struggled with brain cancer for the past three years. "His career has been a study in passion for social justice," Ascher maintained in an e-mail to me. Lavelle had worked on companion books and outreach programs in conjunction with such documentaries as School: The Story of American Public Education, Malcolm X: Make It Plain and Local News, among others. For more information about Lavelle, click here.