Eyes on the Prize was a miniseries broadcast on PBS that explored the Civil Rights movement from the mid fifties to the mid eighties.  It is widely considered to be one of the best nonfiction works regarding black history ever produced.

On to the tale of the tape…

Relevance:  From an ambition stand point alone, to pitch any project by saying “We’re going to attempt to capture the essence of the Civil Rights Movement” is a nearly impossible task.  Among the many things that Eyes on the Prize got right was stressing that the strides made in ‘the Struggle’ were not the result of any one or two men but by an large, diverse group of people who are working toward a common goal.

Legacy:  I don’t know if this is still shown every Black History Month in public schools across the country, (which is how I was introduced to it), but I will speak to two more recent documentaries that follow in this series’ footsteps.  For the various criticisms leveled at Spike Lee and his later fiction work, Four Little Girls and When the Levees Broke are two of the best films he’s ever done. 

Craft:  There’s no way to factually prove this of course, but it’s widely believed that the rise of television (specifically the news) went a long way in helping end Jim Crow in the South.  It’s one thing to read about civil unrest in the morning newspaper, it’s a completely different story to see people getting ran down with fire hoses and attacked by police dogs.  If you’ve somehow never seen this footage, then you need to rent this series.

Crossover:  The series was nominated for Oscars and Emmys, and won Peabody and Television Critic Awards.  Nuff said.

Apollo:  Like other works that deal with the Civil Rights Movement, the ‘Apollo’ factor is somewhat muted since, at least with the nonfiction works, these things really happened.  I’m not the ‘knock you over the head with my message’ type, but in this case I will make the connection between Eyes on the Prize and this Most Important Black Film/TV Show countdown:  know your history.

The countdown continues next month with another historic show…