Watching “Eyes on the Prize” again was like reminiscing with an old friend or relative about the bad old days that, in some important respects, were also the good old days.
Already the story so brilliantly told by this masterpiece of documentary filmmaking, the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and ’60s, is fading, like the images on old film stock, from our collective consciousness.
It’s fantastic to have a memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the National Mall in Washington. But “Eyes on the Prize” is the most powerful reminder we have of how broad the struggle was, how many people of great courage — from small children to very old men and women — signed on to it, how many of them suffered and sometimes died, and what all of us owe to all of them.
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“Eyes” first ran in 1987 and is being shown again this fall on PBS. Understated, mostly in black and white, it has lost none of its startling emotional impact. There were moments, as I watched the episodes unfold, when I wanted to jump through the television and throttle somebody.
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“Eyes on the Prize” is a demonstration that even the greatest challenges can be overcome. It’s a national treasure, important for all the reasons that history is important.
