Fwd: civil rights documentary April 6
Gail Acree
From: Emmanuel Mennonite Church <gnvm...@bellsouth.net>
Date: Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 3:40 PM
Subject: civil rights documentary April 6
To: Eve MacMaster <eve...@aol.com>
Beginning a six-week screening and discussion of Eyes on the Prize:
America's Civil Rights Years 1954–1964.
In this week’s episode, “Awakenings (1954-1956),”
individual acts of courage inspire black Southerners to fight for their rights:
Mose Wright testifies against the white men who murdered young Emmett Till,
and Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man in
Montgomery, Alabama.
EYES ON THE PRIZE
Eyes on the Prize was created and produced by Henry Hampton (1940-1998),
one of the most influential documentary filmmakers in the 20th century.
His work chronicled America's great political and social movements and set new standards for broadcast quality.
Blackside, the independent film and television company he founded in 1968,
completed 60 major films and media projects that amplified the voices of the poor and disenfranchised.
His enduring legacy continues to influence the field in the 21st century.
Eyes on the Prize is the realization of his desire to share his vision of what he called
"the remarkable human drama that was the Civil Rights Movement."
Over the course of the six one-hour episodes, Eyes on the Prize tells the definitive story of the civil rights era
from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement
that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today.
Eyes on the Prize 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 --
in short, a reality that is now nearly incomprehensible to many young Americans.
Through contemporary interviews and historical footage,
Eyes on the Prize traces the movement from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Voting Rights Act;
from early acts of individual courage through the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions.
Julian Bond, political leader and civil rights activist, narrates.