Eyes on the Prize

History Series / 1 Season

EYES ON THE PRIZE tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. Narrated by political leader and civil rights activist Julian Bond (1940-2015).

Get Cascade PBS Passport to watch

Donate to watch

Awakenings (1954-1956)

S1 E1 / 56m 15s / TV-PG

Individual acts of courage inspire Black Southerners to fight for their rights: Mose Wright testifies against the white men who murdered young Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

Donate to watch

Fighting Back (1957–1962)

S1 E2 / 56m 14s / TV-PG

States’ rights, loyalists, and federal authorities collide in the 1957 battle to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School, and again in James Meredith’s 1962 challenge to segregation at the University of Mississippi. Both times, a Southern governor squares off with a US president, violence erupts - and integration is carried out.

Donate to watch

Ain't Scared of Your Jails (1960-1961)

S1 E3 / 56m 14s / TV-PG

Black college students take a leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement as lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South. Freedom Riders also try to desegregate interstate buses, but they are brutally attacked as they travel.

Donate to watch

No Easy Walk (1961-1963)

S1 E4 / 56m 15s / TV-PG

The Civil Rights Movement discovers the power of mass demonstrations as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges as its most visible leader. Some demonstrations succeed; others fail. But the triumphant March on Washington, D.C., under King’s leadership shows mounting national support for civil rights. President John F. Kennedy proposes the Civil Rights Act.

Donate to watch

Mississippi - Is This America? (1963-1964)

S1 E5 / 56m 15s / TV-PG

Mississippi’s grassroots Civil Rights Movement becomes an American concern when college students travel south to help register black voters and three of them are murdered. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenges the regular Mississippi delegation at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City.

Donate to watch

Bridge to Freedom (1965)

S1 E6 / 56m 15s / TV-PG

A decade of lessons is applied in the climactic and bloody march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. A major victory is won when the federal Voting Rights Bill passes, but civil rights leaders know they have new challenges ahead.

Supported by