PENGUIN BOOKS
EYES ON THE PRIZE
Juan Williams is a top political analyst for Fox Television and a columnist for The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C. He is a regular panelist for Fox News Sunday. A former award-winning Washington Post columnist, Mr. Williams also served as the paper’s White House correspondent. During ten years at NPR, he was the network’s senior correspondent and also the host of NPR’s nationally broadcast afternoon talk show, Talk of the Nation. In addition to prize-winning op-ed columns and editorial writing for The Washington Post, he has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Foxnews.com. A widely celebrated speaker he is also the author of seven books. Several of them have been bestsellers, including Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary and his most recent book, Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate.
Eyes on
the Prize
America’s Civil
Rights Years,
1954–1965
Juan Williams
With the Eyes on the
Prize Production Team
Introduction by Julian Bond
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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New York, New York 10014, USA
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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin Inc. 1987
Published in Penguin books 1988
Published with preface by Judi Hampton and Veva Hampton Zimmerman 2002
This edition with a new preface, introduction, and epilogue published in Penguin Books 2013
Copyright © Blackside, Inc., 1987, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Pages 307–308 constitute an extension of this copyright page.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PREVIOUS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Williams, Juan.
Eyes on the prize.
Includes index.
1. Afro-Americans—Civil rights—History.
I. Title.
KF4757.W52 1987 323.4’0973
86-40271
ISBN: 978-1-101-63930-6
“I know one thing we did right
Was the day we started to fight.
Keep your eyes on the prize,
Hold on, hold on.”
—from a traditional civil rights song
This book is dedicated to the memory of Louis Allen, Thomas Brewer, James Chaney, Addie Mae Collins, Jonathan Daniels, Medgar Evers, Andrew Goodman, Jimmy Lee Jackson, Herbert Lee, the Reverend George W. Lee, Viola Liuzzo, Denise McNair, William Moore, the Reverend James Reeb, Carole Robertson, Michael Schwerner, Lamar Smith, Emmett Till, Cynthia Wesley, and the other men and women who gave their lives for civil rights during the years 1954 to 1965.
It is also dedicated to the people of South Africa. May they come to know that no man is free until all men are free.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One God Bless the Child
The Story of School Desegregation
Chapter Two Standing for Justice
Mississippi and the Till Case
Chapter Three We’re Not Moving to the Back, Mr. Blake
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Chapter Four Hall Monitors from the 101st
The Little Rock Story
Chapter Five Down Freedom’s Main Line
The Movement’s Next Generation
Chapter Six Freedom in the Air
The Lessons of Albany and Birmingham
Interlude The March on Washington
Chapter Seven Mississippi
Freedom Has Never Been Free
Chapter Eight Selma
The Bridge to Freedom
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Credits
Staff
Index
Preface to the 25th Anniversary Edition
The inspiration for this book dates to March of 1965. Even as he joined the throng of protesters crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, my brother, Henry Hampton, knew he was participating in a historic event—and in a movement—that he would one day want to chronicle. It would take almost twenty-five years, but he never lost sight of that mission and in February 1987 his now legendary public television series Eyes on the Prize premiered and this companion volume was published.
The television series won instant acclaim, and in the months that followed it garnered numerous awards, including multiple Emmys, a George Foster Peabody Award, and a duPont. Critics and viewers alike recognized its power, and it became one of the most watched and most talked about public television series in history.
Likewise, this companion volume has enjoyed both critical and popular success, and in the years since its initial publication it has been hailed as the definitive comprehensive history of the early civil rights years. I am gratified by its ongoing popularity among the reading public as well as its use in high schools and colleges around the country. I am honored and pleased to see this twenty-fifth anniversary edition published, and I would like to thank Cindy Kuhn and Frances Kennedy for their efforts in the process of updating it.
Eyes on the Prize—both the book and the television show—dares us to examine our values, to question our perceptions, and to overcome our prejudices and remain in active dialogue with one another about injustice, intolerance, and racism. The stories in Eyes are about ordinary Americans who displayed extraordinary courage in a time that must not be forgotten. Eyes is also about the grass roots strategies and leadership values that created and sustained a more representative democracy. We are still on that journey, though times and generations have changed. This book and the Eyes on the Prize series remain a guide to making our nation’s dream of freedom for all a reality.
Henry Hampton passed away prematurely on November 22, 1998, too soon for those of us who knew and loved him. His death has strengthened our resolve to expand Blackside’s work and to continue Henry’s mission to encourage a national dialogue on crucial social issues. More than anything Henry loved telling the stories of everyday Americans and their struggles to uphold the democratic aims of our country. I dedicate this anniversary edition of Eyes on the Prize to his memory; to the memory of our sister, Vera; and to that of our parents, Dr. and Mrs. Henry Hampton, whose sacrifices made it possible for us to contribute in this way. I applaud once again the Eyes production team who was critical to the success of the films and thank Juan Williams for his inspiring work in this book. Most important, I honor all the heroes of the civil rights movement, both known and unknown, who kept their eyes always on the prize.
—Judi Hampton
Acknowledgments
This book and its companion six-part television series are part of a project conceived by Henry Hampton, executive producer of Blackside, Inc., a Boston film company. Henry Hampton is an extraordinary man who, over the course of seven years, managed to turn his dream of capturing the spirit of the civil rights movement into reality. Not only that, but he managed to impart that spirit to his dedicated and remarkably talented staff. The inevitable money problems lurked around each turn, ready to devour not only the project but also the businessman. But Hampton never fa
ltered. On the contrary, he displayed supreme strength in his idea and this project. Henry Hampton fought the good fight and won.
This book would not have been possible without the skilled and intelligent editorial direction of Robert Lavelle. Indeed, in every phase of the book’s evolution—from conception and organization to research, writing, and editing— Robert has been the guiding force. His wise counsel and superb editorial skills were boundless, and I am greatly in his debt.
Among the additional key contributors to the book are Bennett Singer, who flawlessly and patiently assisted with research, writing, and editing; Frances Norris, who worked tirelessly to collect the pictures displayed here; Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, the project’s senior researcher, who was consistently helpful and always willing to offer precise suggestions for improvement; Hannah Benoit, who worked her magic on the prose by line-editing the manuscript; and Diane Taraskiewicz, a copy editor whose sharp editorial eye was invaluable.
David Garrow read early drafts of the manuscript and provided an invaluable historical perspective. In addition, John Dittmer and Steven Lawson both reviewed the manuscript with historians’ eyes. Clay Carson, Vincent Harding, and Darlene Clark Hine (along with David Garrow) advised the project’s entire staff on this period of American history. During the research phase, the book received additional guidance from Tony Freyer, Wiley Branton, Aldon Morris, and J. Mills Thornton.
Thanks also to the staff of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, specifically Dr. Elinor Sinnette and Charlynn S. Pyne; the staffs of the Schomburg Collection in New York City; the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston; the Columbia University Oral History Project; the Boston Public Library; and the Widener Library at Harvard University.
I would particularly like to thank the film producers, editors, and researchers who worked busily on the Eyes on the Prize television series but were always willing to share their knowledge and research to the benefit of this book.
Steve Fayer, a fine writer, read the material and offered valuable insights. Judy Richardson offered both inspiration and guidance in our attempt to keep the book true to the spirit of the movement. Ruth Batson helped us write a story that would reach out to as broad an audience as possible.
Doe Coover, the project’s literary representative, and Patricia Mulcahy, our editor at Viking, both believed in the project early on. They helped make sure we all worked well together as a team. Pat displayed much-needed confidence that we could get the project done well and on time, and she shared her enthusiasm for the work with the other members of Viking-Penguin’s thoroughly professional staff. Karen Bates-Logan and Gail Ross were very helpful to the project as well.
I would also like to thank Jeanne Jordan, a most literate film editor, who kept the book team going with good cheer as well as insights into people and events; Gregory Witcher, who tolerated me as a distracted houseguest for nearly a year; and Herbert Denton, my friend and mentor.
And finally, my heartfelt thanks go to my wife, Delise; to my children, Antonio and Regan; and to my parents, Roger and Alma Williams.
—Juan Williams
Washington, D.C., September, 1986
Project
Acknowledgments
To complete a project like Eyes on the Prize requires not only dedicated and talented professionals but also support from those outside who believe in the idea. Our friends and supporters were many, and I cannot do justice to their contributions. But without the generous help of the following people, Eyes on the Prize would not have happened: Ruth Batson, Joe Breiteneicher, Bob Hohler, Laya Wiesner, Tom Layton, Susan Silk, Jane Rogers, Duane Silverstein, Jack Mendelsohn, Karen Bates-Logan, Faith Griefen, Judy and Carl Sapers, Kitty Preyer, Anna Faith Jones, Melinda Marble, Donna Dunlop, Jacqui Burton, Suzanne Weil, Barry Chase, Beverly Hassell, Janet Axelrod, Carrolle Perry, Betty Stebman, Lynn Walker, Adele Vincent, Jon Else, Peter Edelman, Sally Lilienthal, Vernon Jordan, Loretta Williams, Eliot Hubbard, Robert Preyer, Michael and Lillian Ambrosino, Paul and Marion Fishman, Vincent Harding, David Garrow, Ron Hull, Josh Darsa, Gene Katt, Janet Taylor, Walter Palmer, John Ramsey, Kay Villers, Jim and Glenda Manzi, Doe Coover, Wendy Puriefoy, Paul Ylvisaker, Ann Raynolds, Gyöngy Laky, Phyllis Friedman, and the hundreds of others who gave of themselves to make this project work.
In addition, my deep thanks go to the many foundations and corporations for their generous support. The names of these key supporters can be found on the staff page at the end of this book.
—Henry Hampton, Executive Producer
Boston, Massachusetts, September, 1986
Introduction
The civil rights movement in America began a long time ago. As early as the seventeenth century, blacks and whites, slaves in Virginia and Quakers in Pennsylvania, protested the barbarity of slavery. Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman are but a few of those who led the resistance to slavery before the Civil War. After the Civil War, another protracted battle began against slavery’s legacy—racism and segregation. But for most Americans, the civil rights movement began on May 17, 1954, when the Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision outlawing segregation in public schools. The court unlocked the door, but the pressure applied by thousands of men and women in the movement pushed that door open wide enough to allow blacks to walk through it toward this country’s essential prize: freedom.
This book, and the television project that it accompanies, brings America’s civil rights years to life with stories about the people and places of that time. Here are the heroes and heroines, the brilliant strategies, the national politics and politicking, the violence, the people who defended segregation as a Southern “tradition,” and the faces of the unheralded people, black and white, who were the soul of the movement. Most of us are familiar with the heroic leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. But the passage of time has obscured the lesser-known folks who created the movement that produced King—such people as Mose Wright, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Charles Houston. This story is really their story, for the movement itself belonged to them. The civil rights drama involved thousands of acts of individual courage undertaken in the name of freedom.
To read these stories was to me both painful and inspiring. I lived through these times. I was fourteen years old when the Supreme Court handed down the Brown decision. Like most young black people of the day, I didn’t realize the far-reaching significance of the court’s pronouncement. The highest court of the land had said that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. In my naïveté I thought, “Well, of course segregation is wrong.” And that was that. In 1955 I was fifteen years old, one year older than Emmett Till when he was killed while visiting relatives in Mississippi. When he supposedly flirted with a white woman, he broke a taboo that was as real in rural Pennsylvania, where I grew up, as it was in the Deep South. What happened to Emmett Till could have happened to me. I was inspired by the great Montgomery bus boycott that took place in Alabama in 1955 and 1956. And of course I followed the news accounts in 1957 when the federal government had to call out the army to enroll nine black children at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. It wasn’t until my days at Morehouse College in Atlanta, however, that I realized what the movement was all about and what it was up against.
On February 1, 1960, four students in Greensboro, North Carolina, kids about my age, decided that they’d had enough of racial barriers. They sat at a whites-only lunch counter at the local Woolworth’s store, requested service, and refused to move until they got it. The sit-in movement had begun. A friend of mine, Lonnie King, handed me a newspaper with the story of the student sit-in prominently displayed. He suggested that we get something going in Atlanta, Georgia. A small group of us got together and organized the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights, and we held our first sit-in on March 15, 1960. On that day, I joined hands with thousands of other Americans in different cities, in different states, who took risks duri
ng those years to create the civil rights movement.
The movement changed my life. As a boy, I thought the most I could ever achieve was a teaching or administrative post in a black school. My father had been president of Lincoln University, which represented a status seldom attained by black Southerners, and he hoped I might follow in his footsteps. Anything more ambitious was unrealistic for a black child. But I would venture far beyond the limited horizons glimpsed from the segregated fifties. I would serve in the Georgia legislature for more than twenty years. I would teach at the University of Virginia for twenty years, a school I could not have attended as a student. And I would go to the White House as a guest of a black president.
My life—and that of Barack Obama—were among the millions of black and white lives profoundly affected by the great movement that spanned the years 1954 to 1965. This book chronicles that change as never before. First, it takes readers beyond the popular belief that a few larger-than-life figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy were the movement’s most important players. That is not to diminish these men, but, as you will learn, they were not solely responsible for this era or its successes. That insight is important, because it reaffirms the truth that in America a movement of the people—and not the actions of one or two leaders—can effect change. And it is particularly important because nowadays few people believe it.
This book demonstrates its truth. In fact, such a movement could happen again, given the right conditions. It won’t happen automatically, and no one, not even the most charismatic leader, can make it happen. No one can really set out to make it happen. For example, the four young men who sat in a Greensboro restaurant to protest restaurant segregation had no notion of where their actions would lead. But their courage inspired others. No one was waiting for a leader— that would only have killed their initiative.
I remember a meeting I once attended with Martin Luther King, Jr., at a hotel in downtown Atlanta. All of the hotel employees, the maids and bellmen, were lined up in the halls to catch a glimpse of him. I heard one person say, “Gee, we’re glad you’ve come, Dr. King, to take care of our problems.” In fact, King had come there for a meeting. I’m sure he cared about those people, but the fact that they had problems was not foremost on his mind. They would never get their problems solved if they waited for Martin Luther King, Jr., to do it for them. When people stopped waiting for someone else and formed their own movement in the 1950s, the problem of legal segregation was overcome. That movement molded a Martin Luther King, Jr., and perhaps a future movement will create another leader of comparable stature.
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