Eyes on the Prize is a documentary series that was broadcasted in 1987 on PBS. It is a 14 hour long series that covers the civil rights movement from 1954-1985 (it is still problematic though that the first episode starts with Brown v. Board. Nonetheless, I think it sill provides a general summary of the important events that happened during that time period relating to civil rights). I wanted to show you guys a clip of the documentary and since I didn’t know what part to show, I just posted the link to the introduction to the series (I believe the entire series is posted on youtube though for anyone who wants to see other parts of it).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHonvu-HxqE
The reason I decided to blog about this series because it got me thinking of the best medium to learn about the civil rights movement. I think the use of television and a documentary are a good way, arguably even better, than books as a way to learn and share information. Classen comments that “television viewing, sometimes conceptualized as a solitary activity involving passive individual viewers, was often remembered as a collective, explicitly social, activity” (151). This holds true even today with the way people watch shows and view programs. Fewer people, especially on a college campus, are using televisions to watch shows and instead use websites like youtube or hulu. Eyes on the Prize does an especially good job of adding to what we already know about the civil rights movement because of 1) its use of oral history and other primary sources 2) its sheer length and the fact that is covers a big chunk of the civil rights movement. The fact that it is posted on a website like youtube allows people all over the world to view it and share it with friends. It also allows for people to post comments and actively communicate thoughts and ideas with one another. I don’t mean to say that Classen’s book or books in general are not a good way of learning about topics like the civil rights movement because they definitely are necessary. I just think in an age where documentaries like this are available to the mass audience, we should try to use this more to our advantage in class settings and in general. So I just want to hear peoples thoughts about the documentary and also; do you think high school classes should use websites like youtube that have documentaries like these posted to show to students and allow for a different approach to teaching?
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This was a really great clip and it makes me want to see the full series. You can find a lot of them on YouTube, but it's a pain to search for each episode since they're all split up into at least 6 clips. I found PBS has the full transcript, since we talked about in class they've had trouble licensing the music used. It might be interesting next year to assign an episode worth of transcript as reading.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt.html
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