ABSTRACT
Popular culture tends to render a narrow version of the Civil Rights Movement for consumption: agitation by national organizations (with loyal foot soldiers to be sure) that began with the “victory” in the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and ended with Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, duly quoting from the movement's anthem “We Shall Overcome.” This version of events follows a teleological structure suggesting that African Americans were once oppressed but managed to challenge racist institutions during the 1950s and 1960s, securing judicial and legislative victories that ended segregation and disfranchisement in the United States. The highly acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize, brilliant in its use of film archives, interviews with civil rights activists and opponents, and samplings of the music that sustained the movement, champions such a narrative. Beginning with “Awakenings” (an account of the Brown decision and the Montgomery Bus Boycott) and ending with “Bridge to Freedom” (a retelling of the Selma to Montgomery march and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965), the series brought this standard version of the movement into the homes of millions of American viewers and countless classrooms across the country. Textbooks often regurgitate this same narrative for high school and college consumption, leaving students and many teachers falsely reassured that they somehow possess an apt story, or at least the necessary facts regarding the civil rights struggle. 1
