Sister Kept Eyes on the Prize

Series Returns, Thanks to Relative’s Persistence

The six-hour documentary “Eyes on the Prize — America’s Civil Rights Movement” makes a triumphant return to the airwaves Monday night with nearly all Public Broadcasting Service affiliates scheduling it, publicist Daphne Noyes told Journal-isms.

The triumph comes partly from raising $1 million to secure permission to re-use video footage, music and photographs for which the licensing rights had expired.

“I’m euphoric today. It’s a dream come true,” Judi Hampton, the sister of the late Henry Hampton, who was executive producer of “Eyes,” told Journal-isms.

Just two years ago, Katie Dean wrote in Wired magazine that broadcasting or selling the documentary new in the United States had become illegal.

“The 14-part series . . . is considered an essential resource by educators and historians, but the filmmakers no longer have clearance rights to much of the archival footage used in the documentary. It cannot be rebroadcast on PBS (where it originally aired) or any other channels, and cannot be released on DVD until the rights are cleared again and paid for,” she wrote.

“It’s a scenario from hell,” Jon Else, series producer and cinematographer for Eyes on the Prize, and now director of the documentary program at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, said in that story. Licensing agreements “are short because it’s all we can afford. The funding for documentaries in this country (is) abysmal.”

After Henry Hampton died in 1998 at age 58, Judi Hampton decided she wanted to get the production, first aired in 1987 and rebroadcast in 1993, televised again.

Judi Hampton, now president of Blackside Productions, had two important connections. Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University was able to “facilitate” a grant from the Gilder Foundation, and Orlando Bagwell, who had produced some of the series, had become a grants administrator at the Ford Foundation.

The two foundations came up with the $1 million, and a team headed by Sandy Forman, legal counsel for Judi Hampton’s project, spent two years clearing the licensing rights to every image and song used in the series.

Television critics used superlatives Monday in urging viewers to watch. “It is not ordinary practice to preview TV reruns, but Eyes on the Prize, the epic civil rights documentary that first aired on PBS in 1987, is one of the most extraordinary programs the medium has ever produced,” David Zurawik wrote Monday in the Baltimore Sun.

“The six-hour, Peabody Award-winning film by the late Henry Hampton has come to be the most important visual document of America’s civil rights years . . . Watch it — even if you already saw it. And take it as a moral imperative, at a time when our national memory seems to grow shorter by the day, to see it with someone from a younger generation, in hopes that they might understand the kind of courage and righteous passion it took to end segregation.”

Along with the series are a number of other initatives.

• The National Black Programming Consortium sponsored a competition for 15 historically black colleges and universities to create their own new media projects to explore civil rights today. Those chosen are to receive $5,000. Outreach coordinator Bradley Burford told Journal-isms another round in the contest would be announced in December.
• The Annie E. Casey Foundation is supporting Outreach Extensions, a national consulting firm based in California, which intends to take the project into religious venues and is sponsoring an oral history project, in which money is made available for communities to record recollections from people who were in the civil rights movement, Hampton said.
• “Facing History and Ourselves,” a group working with educators, has prepared study guides.

Meanwhile, Henry Hampton’s alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, is hosting the exhibition “Eyes on the Prize I and II: Documenting the Civil Rights Movement” through Dec. 21. It “focuses on the creation of Eyes on the Prize, from Hampton’s early efforts to its highly successful premiere broadcast on PBS 20 years ago, and the influence the series still has today,” a news release says.

Judi Hampton, active in the Movement and now a sixtysomething, said there were three messages she hoped the series imparts: “Nonviolent action can create change. It is still a very viable strategy. This shows you how it’s done.”

“Individual people who were extremely courageous made a change in history.”

“We’re having national discussions about human rights, with immigration and the war in Iraq. This shows you how people created change.” It does not have to be marching, she said. “I advocate authentic personal action — voting, volunteering in a domestic abuse shelter, being a mentor . . .”

• Orlando Bagwell, Ernest Green, Judy Richardson and Juan Williams, “Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio: ‘Eyes on the Prize’ Civil Rights Series Returns to PBS
• Kerra L. Bolton, Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times: Race relations, passing judgment still problems among teenagers
• Harold Jackson, Philadelphia Inquirer: Have we lost sight of the prize?
• Dwight Lewis, Nashville Tennessean: There’s better TV on than ‘Survivor’

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On Beauty, Blacks “Going in the Other Direction”

In September, a new doll test showed that black children still believe white dolls are prettier than black ones.

On YouTube, a popular documentary (153,700 views so far for the first installment) by white filmmaker Aron Ranen discusses the takeover of the multibillion-dollar black hair care industry by Koreans. It says that 70 percent of all wigs and extensions purchased in the United States are bought by African Americans.

The beauty standards many blacks are embracing also came up Friday on National Public Radio’s “News & Notes,” in a http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6166533conversation about celebrities such as Kate Moss and Gwyneth Paltrow wearing African jewelry and face paint with the slogan: “I am an African,” to demonstrate solidarity in the fight against AIDS in Africa. From the transcript:

JOE DAVIDSON, a Washington Post editor: “In terms of the beauty standards and these kinds of things, it kind of strikes me in a couple of ways. One, I wonder if it is just totally opportunistic; just a way for people who are already rich to make more money. But on the other hand, when I see all these black women walking around with blond hair, straightened —”

NAT IRVIN, professor of future studies at Wake Forest University: “Tell it, brother!”

“Mr. DAVIDSON: …and the way…

Host FARAI CHIDEYA: Uh-oh!

“Prof. IRVIN: Tell it brother!

“Mr. DAVIDSON: …the way we as a people have just grabbed white beauty standards, you know, forever, basically.

“CHIDEYA: You need to go to jail and talk to Lil’ Kim.

“(Soundbite of laughter)

“Mr. DAVIDSON: You know, I think that if some white people want to take on the beauty standards of African people, you know, I can’t be totally upset about that even if they are making money off of it.

MARY FRANCIS BERRY, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, and former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission: “And it is amazing, Joe, how – since you got on it – it is amazing how people have, everybody has gone to that. Straighten my hair and make it red or whatever it is. And try to…”

“Prof. IRVIN: Tell it, Mary!

“Prof. BERRY: . . . look that way.

“Prof. IRVIN: Tell it!

“Prof. BERRY: We went through that before…

“Prof. IRVIN: That’s right.

“Prof. BERRY: …and had to get away from it. Now we’re going back to it again.

“Prof. IRVIN: Deeper than ever.

“CHIDEYA: So what are you going to say about the Japanese girls who have, like, Afro perms? I mean is that…

“Prof. BERRY: Right.

“CHIDEYA: …is that being African?

“Prof. BERRY: It’s all – what all this means is not taking seriously the burdens of race and oppression and trivializing things and thinking you’re doing a good thing. I think this whole business of the white folks trying to be African in these campaigns, you know, part of it is this campaign about the AIDS charity, Keep a Child Alive, and that’s supposed to be helpful and symbolize their empathy for people in Africa. But you’re right, it is ethno-primitive the way it’s being done.

“Maybe they should get their hair kinked or something. Or do some other – or learn something about Africa. Or go and do something culturally with Africa besides, you know – I mean, I don’t know, maybe something else.

“But we are, as Joe said, on the other side going in the other direction as black people.”

• Michael H. Cottman, BlackAmericaWeb.com: No Surprise – Skin Tone Study Reveals Preference for Light-Skinned Employees
• Kiri Davis, filmmaker, and Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald columnist, “Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio: African-American Images: The New Doll Test

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S. Dakota Paper Examines Sports and Racism

“With a white population of 88 percent, South Dakota’s treatment of minorities reveals that racial attitudes and stereotypes still exist. They often are seen in the spectrum of sports â?? where competitiveness and community pride serve as flashpoints for the best and worst that society has to offer,” Stu Whitney wrote Sunday in the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader, beginning a series on sports and racism.

“Part of South Dakota’s problem stems from inexperience in relating to minorities. Unlike the Deep South, where racial conflict crested with the civil rights fervor of the 1960s, white residents rarely have been forced to confront racial attitudes apart from their relations with Native Americans.”

“. . . The question remains: Do sports in South Dakota provide a glimpse at age-old prejudices and stereotypes? Most white residents don’t think racism is a problem in this state â?? but those on the receiving end see it differently,” Whitney wrote.

A second piece Sunday was headlined “White-Indian tension persists.” Today’s installment was, “Racial tensions worked out on field: Native American, white teams still battle distrust.”

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Whitaker Inspired by Newsweek’s Rights Coverage

In his farewell column as editor of Newsweek, Mark Whitaker, the first African American editor of a major newsmagazine, says it was its civil rights coverage that first interested him in Newsweek.

“It was the summer of 1967, and I was 9 years old. My father, who lived in L.A., had come east to see my younger brother and me. We were sitting outside the motel room he had rented on Cape Cod, and he was reading an issue of NEWSWEEK,” he wrote. “‘NEWSWEEK has been much better on the civil-rights movement than Time,’ he said. That was recommendation enough for me: I began reading the magazine religiously. It was the heyday of Oz Elliott‘s reign as editor, and NEWSWEEK became a window onto civil rights, Vietnam, the women’s movement and so much else in the world beyond the small town where I lived.”

Whitaker concluded that “Sadly, however, we live in a time when more and more people seem interested only in news and opinion that supports their pre-existing beliefs. I hope this is a passing symptom of today’s angry political climate, because for all the flaws of the ‘mainstream media’ I think we would all find that, like George Bailey in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ this country would be a lot worse off without it.”

Whitaker becomes vice president and editor in chief of new ventures with Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the digital division of parent company Washington Post Co.

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Study Looks at Races’ Attitudes on Group Identity

“A new study (PDF) with direct implications for the politics of immigration and minority groups in this election year finds that improved socioeconomic status among racial and ethnic minorities generally diminishes racial and ethnic group consciousness across a variety of public policies. However, African Americans are more likely than Latinos and Asian Americans to retain their racial group consciousness regardless of improvements in their economic circumstances because they are more likely to face discrimination in their everyday lives.”

The study by Dennis Chong and Dukhong Kim of Northwestern University appears in the August 2006 issue of the American Political Science Review, a journal of the American Political Science Association.

Writing in the Seattle Times, columnist Jerry Large summarized it this way on Sunday: “The fact is people who feel free to soar as individuals don’t seek the protection of groups. . . . This study left us with some good news for anyone who worries about ethnic politics. Play nice, and race stops being an issue.”

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Short Takes

• Kansas City Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock, fired from ESPN last week because of critical comments he made about sports journalists Mike Lupica and Scoop Jackson in a blog interview, said Sunday that ESPN is “a monopoly. It’s the most powerful sports entity, I think, in America, but it’s not properly covered by the American media because too many of us are in bed with ESPN,” he said on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
• “Pranay Gupte, who last week claimed the New York Sun stole his ‘Lunch at the Four Seasons’ column after the paper ran it under a byline other than his, is headed to the Khaleej Times in Dubai,” Fishbowl NY reported today, citing a message sent by Gupte.
• Karen Brown Dunlap, president of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Zubeida Jaffer, “an acclaimed South African journalist whose activism made her a key figure in the anti-Apartheid movement,” are among eight journalists scheduled to receive the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, the University of Missouri School of Journalism announced last week.
• The Supreme Court declined Monday to revive a libel lawsuit filed against two Philadelphia newspapers by the late civil rights activist C. DeLores Tucker, who accused the papers of mischaracterizing her dispute with the estate of slain rapper Tupac Shakur and others, the Associated Press reported today. Shakur wrote lyrics that rhymed Tucker’s name with an obscenity.
• New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof wrote Sunday of his trip to the Central African Republic with college student Casey Parks, winner of a contest to accompany him there. They were stopped twice by the same two bandits and let go. “The legacy of Darfur may be that all of Chad and the Central African Republic will collapse into Somalia-style anarchy,” Kristof wrote.
• Federal Communications Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps will attend a town hall meeting/public hearing in New York City on Oct. 19 to take part in a discussion on diversity in the broadcast industry, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists announced on Friday. NAHJ is a co-sponsor of the meeting.
• Tavis Smiley, media personality and activist, was the subject of a profile Sunday by Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times. “In Tavis[‘] World, control is everything. When I admire the look of his office one day, he beams. ‘Look around,’ he commands. ‘The carpet, the furniture, the baseboards â?? I helped design the whole building .. . I told my lawyer, “Every project we do, I want to be an owner.” Owning â?? that’s the way of controlling your future,'” Smiley is quoted as saying. Smiley also notes that the Times, his hometown paper, had heretofore not written a profile on him.
• Readers who have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for some time might remember Ricki Stevenson as a weekend anchor on KRON-TV. She also worked for CBS, KPIX television and KBLX radio, Brenda Payton wrote Sept. 24 in the Oakland Tribune. Now Stevenson lives in Paris. “Stevenson, using public transportation, shows tourists the historic sites of the African- American experience in Paris, such as the house where Richard Wright lived and the theater where [Josephine] Baker performed,” Payton wrote.
• Elizabeth Vargas, former co-anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” “took 10 weeks [of maternity] leave from her job at ABC, but that’s not to say she hasn’t been working,” Liza Hamm and Charlotte Triggs wrote Sunday for People magazine. “‘I am on the phone several times a week planning and booking stories and I start shooting some interviews in October. My first night back we have a major project airing.’ The topic is something Vargas knows a thing or two about. ‘We have decided to address the issue of whether or not working mothers can have it all,’ she says. ‘Obviously, I’m exhibit A for: you can’t. At least, not if ‘all’ is defined as anchoring World News Tonight.”
• Religion writer Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press wrote a stage-setting story Sunday on the Nation of Islam. It began, “Minister Louis Farrakhan, ailing and in seclusion at his Michigan home, has ceded leadership of the Nation of Islam to an executive board while he recovers, saying the movement must prove that it ‘is more than the charisma, eloquence and personality’ of one person.”
• Dallas Morning News columnist Macarena Hernandez wrote favorably Saturday of ABC’s new Americanized telenovela, “Ugly Betty.” “I don’t know whether ABC has really seen the ‘brown’ light, but with Latino buying power in the United States estimated to be nearly $800 billion annually, any network honcho has got to want a bite of that gigantic empanada. . . . It would be wonderful if more Latinas, Ugly Bettys or otherwise, would see the growing possibilities for them in the world. On the TV show, Betty wears glasses. They’re not rose-colored. And they don’t need to be,” Hernandez wrote.
• “Al Día, the Spanish-language daily published by The Dallas Morning News, is marking its third anniversary Friday with a continuing program of community events, and a new round of television commercials, Editor & Publisher reported on Thursday. “For the past several weeks, Al Día has also celebrated the anniversary by supporting an early childhood educational program for at-risk children, and similar programs. It is hosting a job fair in October.”
• “To celebrate its 10-year anniversary, Latina magazine is hosting a party tour in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Houston. Festivities include free makeovers by L’Oréal Paris, fashion shows, musical entertainment, inspirational seminars, activities for children and lots of giveaways,” Joy Sewing wrote Friday in the Houston Chronicle.
• “Mexican newspapers will conduct their own version of America’s three-year-old Sunshine Week campaign for open government, a group of journalists announced at the annual meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in Mexico City Sunday,” Mark Fitzgerald wrote today in Editor & Publisher.
• Sam Fulwood III, columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, took issue with Juan Williams‘ criticism of “black leaders” in Williams’ book, “Enough.” “As someone who’s spent a lifetime around black people, I’ve rarely heard anyone – including Jesse, Al or Louis – described as their leader,” Fulwood wrote on Sept. 26, referring to Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. “Leadership isn’t color-coded.”