These lectures are curated around the 1987 award-winning television series, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Eyes on the Prize, collecting and presenting in one cogent set all of the major events of the Civil Rights Movement from 1954-1985. When Eyes on the Prize premiered in 1987, _The Los Angeles Times_ called it “an exhaustive documentary that shouldn’t be missed.” The series went on to win six Emmys and numerous other awards, including an Academy Award nomination, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the top duPont-Columbia award for excellence in broadcast journalism. The program recounts the fight to end decades of discrimination and segregation. It is the story of the people - young and old, male and female, northern and southern - who, compelled by a meeting of conscience and circumstance, worked to eradicate a world where whites and blacks could not go to the same school, ride the same bus, vote in the same election, or participate equally in society. It was a world in which peaceful demonstrators were met with resistance and brutality, a reality that is now nearly incomprehensible to many young Americans. A reprise of the series appeared on The World Channel in 2016.
These lectures are curated around the 1987 award-winning television series, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Eyes on the Prize, collecting and presenting in one cogent set all of the major events of the Civil Rights Movement from 1954-1985. When Eyes on the Prize premiered in 1987, _The Los Angeles Times_ called it “an exhaustive documentary that shouldn’t be missed.” The series went on to win six Emmys and numerous other awards, including an Academy Award nomination, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the top duPont-Columbia award for excellence in broadcast journalism. The program recounts the fight to end decades of discrimination and segregation. It is the story of the people - young and old, male and female, northern and southern - who, compelled by a meeting of conscience and circumstance, worked to eradicate a world where whites and blacks could not go to the same school, ride the same bus, vote in the same election, or participate equally in society. It was a world in which peaceful demonstrators were met with resistance and brutality, a reality that is now nearly incomprehensible to many young Americans. A reprise of the series appeared on The World Channel in 2016.
