I’m late to the viewing: The PBS series on the African-American Civil Rights Movement, Eyes on the Prize. Archival footage, interviews. So much is there. The Montgomery bus boycott and James Meredith and the University of Mississippi. The Freedom Riders, the March to Selma, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Panther Party. SNCC and James Forman and James Lewis and Muhammad Ali.
Sometimes we forget our history. Sometimes we never really learned it. I remember SNCC in the Vietnam War. My war. I wasn’t sufficiently familiar with its role in the Civil Rights Movement.
This statement from James Forman, SNCC leader, really hit me hard: “If we can’t sit at the table [of democracy], let’s knock the fucking legs off.” Yes. Sometimes, the gradual approach and patience just don’t work so well.
Watch this documentary series with your children and grandchildren. Help them see and learn and understand. Watch it for yourself. To see and learn and understand – and remember, always. It’s not to late.
