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film1987

Eyes on the Prize

Disciplines:
history
documentary

Summary

Eyes on the Prize is a landmark PBS documentary series about the American civil rights movement, directed by Henry Hampton.

Core Contribution

A clip from Eyes on the Prize showing Southern segregationists defending racial segregation by appeal to community tradition and social convention is used in the lecture to demonstrate the fatal flaw of Walzer-style communitarian justice — that defining justice by shared community meanings endorses whatever a community happens to believe, including deeply unjust practices.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Segregationist tradition argument (shows segregationists defending Jim Crow as the natural, traditional way of life — illustrating how tradition can be morally monstrous)
  • Communitarian critique illustration (used to show the limits of Walzer's shared-meanings theory: communities can share meanings for unjust practices)
  • Peabody Award winner (won the Peabody Award — the highest honor in broadcast journalism)
  • 14-hour scope (the 14-episode series covered 1954–1985, the most comprehensive documentary treatment of the civil rights era)

Historical Influences

Henry Hampton

Intellectual Lineage

American documentary traditionCivil rights history preservation

Allied Works

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? The Simpsons

Contemporaries & Peers

The Simpsons Fear Factor

Minds Influenced

No recorded minds influenced.

Intellectual Posterity

Civil rights documentary standardHistory as memory project

Discussing

Eyes on the Prize

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