Eyes on the Prize

Matt Altstiel
9/27/05
Afro 3866

Three Pivotal Factors

The documentary, Eyes on the Prize did an excellent job showing the struggle for African Americans to gain entrance to previously all white educational systems. The film made the point that African American determination, the struggle between state and federal power, and the resistance shown by Southern Whites all played pivotal roles for integration. Little Rock’s Central High School as well as the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) were chosen as the two pivotal examples.

It was interesting to watch the interviews of the African Americans, (the Little Rock Nine and James Meredith) from the 1960’s and from recent times. Both groups were resolute, articulate, and non-violent in their approach. Even though their admission brought about riots and federal challenges, their behavior allowed their classmates and moderate white to see the validity of integration.

Presidents, Eisenhower and Kennedy came off as extremely weak in the video. Until the authority of the federal government was challenged and federal supremacy of law was asserted, both Presidents catered to Southern sympathies and state governments. Little moral justification for the sending in troops was ever used by either president and in each case; intervention seemed just to save face. The phone conversations recorded and replayed in the documentary made Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett appear much stronger than President Kennedy.

Finally, the most amazing portion of the video to me was the strength and violence of Southern White Resistance. Although little resistance occurred when a plan and timeline for school desegregation emerged in Arkansas, riots broke out when the first African American students entered Central High School. Indiscriminate violence, killings, and destruction of property in Little Rock and at Ol’ Miss were the result of such mob action. The violence shown by white mobs in the South helped convince the federal government to bring in troops to restore law and order. Given the response of the federal government, such violence precipitated change rather than maintaining the status quo. Typically, when I thought of riots during the civil rights era, I imagined the stories I had heard from Milwaukee, Memphis, Detroit and Los Angeles during the summer of 1968, and not of the White Riots in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.