Eyes on the Prize

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i guess our courage

came out of because we didn't have nothing,

that we couldn't lose nothing.

but we wanted something for ourselves and for our children.

and so we took a chance with our lives.

man: we marched up the steps

with this circle of soldiers with bayonets drawn.

and walking up the steps that day

was probably one of the biggest feelings i've ever had.

i figured i had finally cracked it.

man: my freedom is very much entangled

with the freedom of every other man.

so i'm fighting for my own freedom here.

man: are you scared?

yes, i'm very much afraid-- everyone here is.

narrator: in a ten-year period, in the 1950s and 1960s,

america fought a second revolution.

narrator: it was fought in the south

by black people and white.

it was fought in the streets,

in churches, in courts, in schools.

it was fought to make america be america for all its citizens.

these were america's civil rights years.

reporter: i take it then that you are advocating

negroes in new york

to stay out of these national chain stores?

oh, no, that's not true.

i'm advocating that american citizens

interested in democracy

should stay out of chain stores.

woman: i have thought for a long time

that negroes should be allowed to sit at the counters

where we are served downtown.

this is just a part of many things

that i think they should be allowed to do.

all the people of the south are in favor of segregation.

and supreme court or no supreme court,

we are going to maintain segregated schools

down in dixie.

we're willing to be beaten for democra

and you misuse democracy in the streets!

why don't you get out in front of the camera and go on?

it's not a matter of being in front of the camera.

it's a matter of facing your sheriff... and then hide your blows.

it was a clear engagement between those who wished

the fullness of their personalities to be met

and those that would destroy us physically and psychologically.

you do not walk away from that.

this is what movement meant.

movement meant that finally

we were encountering on a mass scale

the evil that had been destroying us on a mass scale.

you do not walk away from that.

you continue to answer it.

i always think of what matthew, junior, told me

when he called... when he called from the jail.

he said... he said, "be cool, mother."

and that was very trying,

and yet it was amusing, too--

his telling me to be cool at this point.

martin luther king, jr.: we must come to see

that the end we seek

is a society at peace with itself,

a society that can live with its conscience.

and that will be a day not of the white man,

not of the black man.

that will be the day of man as man.

narrator: it was a hard fight

challenging america's basic beliefs.

what is an "inalienable right"?

what is "equal treatment under the law"?

what is "liberty and justice for all"?

it was a hard fight, but the prize was freedom

and no american could afford to lose.

narrator: for much of this century, america was segregated.

it was our social system,

our way of keeping blacks and whites apart.

by custom and by law,

most blacks were servants, laborers, tenant farmers;

went to separate, poorer schools,

lived in separate, poorer housing.

segregation was the context for black lives

throughout the country, but especially in the south--

a complete environment, socially and psychologically.

listen.

for a long time i had the idea

that a man with white skin was superior

because it appeared to me that he had everything.

and i figured if god...

would justify the white man having everything,

that god had put him in a position to be the best.

if you're born into a system that's wrong,

whether it's a slave system

or whether it's a segregated system,

you take it for granted.

and i was born into a system that was segregated

and denied blacks the right to vote--

it also denied women the right to vote--

and i took it for granted.

nobody told me any different.

nobody said it was strange or unusual

or wasn't like other states.

narrator: segregation had its rules

and southern blacks knew that if they didn't obey them--

if they didn't step aside to let a white man pass

or if a black man looked too closely at a white woman--

the system could be enforced by violence.

groups like the ku klux klan used terrorism

to uphold white supremacy

and were an ever-present symbol of intimidation.

but there were always blacks who fought against segregation.

many ministers preached equality,

and black unions and organizations

like the national association

for the advancement of colored people

worked for it for decades

through speeches, demonstrations and court cases.

all american news brings you our people's contributions

to america and freedom.

narrator: world war ii had an enormous impact

on black hopes for change.

black americans fought and died in a segregated u.s. army.

but they saw a larger, unsegregated world.

they saw their own power as they fought

and as some were trained as officers and specialists.

and they came back with a new sense of themselves.

man: i spent three years overseas in new guinea

and i became an officer during that period.

i had been eager to exercise authority,

so when we got out,

it was just one more step to say, "well, look--

we aren't going to take this anymore."

narrator: the south they came back to was determined to resist change,

and most of the nation was not ready to hear

black demands for justice.

then, in the early 1950s,

after years of carefully planned litigation,

the n.a.a.c.p. brought these demands to the supreme court.

the test cases were set in schools.

on may 17, 1954, the supreme court ruled unanimously

in brown vs. board of education

that segregated schools were unconstitutional.

it called into question the whole system of segregation.

it was quite a shock to southerners

to be told that the way they had been running their affairs

for many, many years

was no longer acceptable to the nation as a whole.

and a great many of the older crowd of white southerners

felt that they came of an ancestry

that were founders of the republic

and they knew the constitution

and customs and laws of the country

as well as anybody else.

narrator: the south resisted desegregation with legal and illegal delays.

it would take years before the supreme court's decision

would be implemented in any meaningful way.

but it had one immediate effect.

i think that the greatest impact of the brown decision

was on the black community itself.

it was a statement to the black community

that they had a friend, so to speak--

the supreme court.

and so it emboldened the communities of blacks

around the country

to move forward to secure their own rights.

narrator: the change began slowly, especially in rural areas.

blacks knew they could still lose their livelihood

or their lives if they pushed whites too fast.

but step by step, the change began,

first with small acts of personal courage.

in september 1955,

an old man named mose wright took that remarkable first step.

his story starts at the tallahatchie river

in money, mississippi.

here the body of mose wright's nephew, emmett till, was found

weighed down in the waters.

two local men were arrested and charged with the murder.

they were white.

emmett till was black.

till had come down from chicago to visit his relatives.

this is mose wright.

i am the uncle of emmett louis till.