By Charles H. F. Davis III, Ph.D.
Originally published by HBOmax for Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground
More than two decades after the Civil Rights Movement, Henry Hampton’s award-winning 14-part documentary Eyes on the Prize chronicled a transformative period in American social and political history and those individuals closest to the grassroots organizing that made it all possible. Altogether, the film series embodied the Pan-African principle of Sankofa, bringing from the past that which may have otherwise been forgotten. It forced upon a Nation committed to the practice of historical amnesia, an inability to refute its reckoning Introduction and the demonstrable exercise of Black political power.
Now, more than three decades later, we again are being called to remember. As the lingering backlash of white resentment continues to infringe upon our ability to participate in electoral politics equitably, Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground helps remind us we have been here before.
It serves as a marker whereby we can understand what once seemed impossible was nonetheless achievable, even if only through the unrelenting political will and steadfast determination of
our people.
What is more, at a time when the American democratic project continues to fail to be as
good as its promise—and nearly half of all U.S. states have introduced or passed bills restricting educators from telling the truth about our Nation’s endemic racism—this film offers an important resource for parents, families, and communities who refuse to forget.
As a movement scholar and documentarian, I constantly wonder about how our collective work will help create communities of memory for the future of Black study and Black struggle. I often compel myself to consider the choices we are making in a content-driven economy and whether we are willing to tell the truth about what has and continues to happen in our fight for the right to self-determination. This is especially important considering much of what has been written about a generations-long movement for Black lives have needed constant revision to redress the dismissal, disregard, and flat-out erasure of Black women, femme, queer, trans, and non-binary voices. And yet this film builds upon Hampton’s work in ways that further a necessary queering of the proverbial ‘color line,’ not only in representation but in its visions for a world that demands the destruction of what we know in exchange for building what we can imagine.
In no uncertain terms, Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground is a definitive cultural and political artifact of our time. It moves us in all the ways great art can make the familiar strange and the strange familiar while also guiding us in recognizing important themes across the (her)story of Black political struggle. Quite remarkably, it brings us into a closer relationship with our ancestors as well as our contemporaries in a recognizable
call and response between the past and the present. As a companion to Hampton’s original, this film is not merely a bridge, but rather acts as a portal through which we can see the two dimensions of time as a continuum along with the ever-present expectation and possibility of Black futures in which we can all be free. Our freedom is intimately connected to justice, which, in the context of abolition, recognizes the presence of Black life as a precondition. In this way, this film compels us to imagine “the prize” as neither an indictment nor a verdict, not rhetoric or reform. Rather, justice is Breonna and George and Freddie and Mike and Trayvon and you and I still being here.