Civil rights guru eyes the prize

The award-winning documentary Eyes on the Prize has become such an important bearer of the legacy of the civil rights movement that it is now incorporated into the curricula of high schools and colleges alike. Yesterday evening, the man who wrote the companion guide to the series told a group of about 20 students about how they, as individuals, can strive to be like the pioneers of one of the century's most galvanizing movements. Juan Williams was invited to speak by organizers of the Penn Humanities Forum, which is sponsoring the week-long program called Human Nature-Human Rights. It was fitting that Williams addressed the crowd yesterday, on the day the program was exploring the civil rights movement, since Eyes on the Prize chronicles it from its peaceful beginnings in 1954 to the more riotous times of 1968. At the beginning of yesterday's session, Deputy Provost Peter Conn called the week-long program "a preeminent venue for lectures, discussions and films where issues of the most academic and public significance are discussed." Williams' talk also included a film screening of three of the series' episodes: "Ain't Scared of Your Jails," "Bridge to Freedom" and "Back to the Movement." The three segments use live interviews, authentic video and media coverage of historic occurrences -- like the march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery Ala., and the race riots in Watts and Detroit -- and effective use of voice-overs and music. In his nearly hour-long talk, Williams discussed the importance of individual involvement in such a movement. "Individuals with even the minimalist standard of strength can join in a coalition to achieve social change," Williams said. Williams, who is the host of National Public Radio's Talk of the Radio and a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday, emphasized that several of the acts of civil disobedience illustrated throughout the film helped produce some of the victories in equality that black Americans enjoy today. He told the story of Barbara Johns, a young African-American girl in the 1940s, who noticed racial inequality in the school system of Prince Edward's County, Va. She called numerous law officials -- including then-NAACP member Thurgood Marshall -- in an effort to call attention to the segregation. Through her hard work, she brought lawyers on her behalf to Virginia, and the case was later used as part of the famous 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, that overturned the "separate but equal" edict. History Professor Thomas Sugrue, who offered opening remarks, called the film "a powerful act of remembrance." "It is a call to our conscience and a challenge to our complacency towards injustice in the United States," he said. Added College sophomore Sharon Appelbaum, one of the students in Sugrue's class on the 1960s, "I first saw portions of this film when I was in middle school and I remember the images of the fire hoses and police dogs being very strange and shocking to me."

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