Eyes on the Prize

The rebroadcast of PBS’ Eyes on the Prize over the past weekend, some twenty years after its original appearance, has evoked in me (and no doubt others of my generation) a sense almost of disbelief: Did we have any sense of what was happening to this nation as those events were occurring? True, documentaries are narratives; they retell a story, telescope events and give them a dramatic form. What they document is not reality as lived so much as reality given meaning. Yet, I know I am not alone in being shocked at my inability to recall the shooting of thirty-five U.S. Marshalls by Southern rebels protesting the admission of James Meredith to the University of Alabama. Did the press cover this story—or suppress it? The voice of Julian Bond, the series’ narrator, intones that this event may be seen as “the last battle of the Civil War.” Yet, we know that this is not true, that the phrase has been used many times, to characterize many events, and that, most importantly, may be presently in reserve for some future event, since what the series makes clear is that the Civil War is still not over.