8.9/1017 votesLoading...#1 - The Promised Land, 1967-1968
Season 2 Episode 4 - Aired 2/5/1990
Martin Luther King stakes out new ground for himself and the rapidly fragmenting civil rights movement. One year before his death, he publicly opposes the war in Vietnam. His Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) embarks on an ambitious Poor People's Campaign. In the midst of political organizing, King detours to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, where he is assassinated. King's death and the failure of his final campaign mark the end of a major stream of the movement.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.9/1019 votesLoading...#2 - Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More, 1964-1972
Season 2 Episode 5 - Aired 2/12/1990
A call to pride and a renewed push for unity galvanize black America. World heavyweight champion Cassius Clay challenges America to accept him as Muhammad Ali, a minister of Islam who refuses to fight in Vietnam. Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., fight to bring the growing black consciousness movement and their African heritage inside the walls of this prominent black institution. Black elected officials and community activists organize the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in an attempt to create a unified black response to growing repression against the movement.
Director: Sam Pollard
Writer: Sam Pollard
8.8/1022 votesLoading...#3 - A Nation of Law?, 1967-1968
Season 2 Episode 6 - Aired 2/19/1990
Black activism is increasingly met with a sometimes violent and unethical response from local and federal law enforcement agencies. In Chicago, two Black Panther Party leaders are killed in a pre-dawn raid by police acting on information supplied by an FBI informant. In the wake of President Nixon's call to "law and order," stepped-up arrests push the already poor conditions at New York's Attica State Prison to the limit. A five-day inmate takeover calling the public's attention to the conditions leaves 43 men dead: four killed by inmates, 39 by police.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.8/1016 votesLoading...#4 - Back to the Movement, 1979-mid 1980s
Season 2 Episode 8 - Aired 3/5/1990
Power and powerlessness. Miami's black community -- pummeled by urban renewal, a lack of jobs, and police harassment -- explodes in rioting. But in Chicago, an unprecedented grassroots movement triumphs. Frustrated by decades of unfulfilled promises made by the city's Democratic political machine, reformers install Harold Washington as Chicago's first black mayor.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.7/1017 votesLoading...#5 - Two Societies, 1965-1968
Season 2 Episode 2 - Aired 1/20/1990
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come north to help Chicago's civil rights leaders in their nonviolent struggle against segregated housing. Their efforts pit them against Chicago's powerful mayor, Richard Daley. When a series of marches through all-white neighborhoods draws violence, King and Daley negotiate with mixed results. In Detroit, a police raid in a black neighborhood sparks an urban uprising that lasts five days, leaving 43 people dead. The Kerner Commission finds that America is becoming "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal." President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the commission, ignores the report.
Director: Sam Pollard
Writer: Sam Pollard
8.7/1020 votesLoading...#6 - Power! 1967-1968
Season 2 Episode 3 - Aired 1/29/1990
The call for Black Power takes various forms across communities in black America. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes wins election as the first black mayor of a major American city. The Black Panther Party, armed with law books, breakfast programs, and guns, is born in Oakland. Substandard teaching practices prompt parents to gain educational control of a Brooklyn school district but then lead them to a showdown with New York City's teachers' union.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.6/1038 votesLoading...#7 - No Easy Walk, 1962-1966
Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 2/11/1987
The civil rights movement discovers the power of mass demonstrations as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges as its most visible leader. Some demonstrations succeed; others fail. But the triumphant March on Washington, D.C., under King's leadership, shows a mounting national support for civil rights. President John F. Kennedy proposes the Civil Rights Act.
Director: Callie Crossley, James A. DeVinney
Writer: Callie Crossley, James A. DeVinney
8.6/1018 votesLoading...#8 - The Keys to the Kingdom, 1974-1980
Season 2 Episode 7 - Aired 2/26/1990
In the 1970s, antidiscrimination legal rights gained in past decades by the civil rights movement are put to the test. In Boston, some whites violently resist a federal court school desegregation order. Atlanta's first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, proves that affirmative action can work, but the Bakke Supreme Court case challenges that policy.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.5/1047 votesLoading...#9 - Awakenings, 1954-1956
Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 1/21/1987
Individual acts of courage inspire black Southerners to fight for their rights: Mose Wright testifies against the white men who murdered young Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.
Director: Judith Vecchione
Writer: Judith Vecchione
8.5/1045 votesLoading...#10 - Fighting Back, 1957-1962
Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 1/28/1987
States' rights loyalists and federal authorities collide in the 1957 battle to integrate Little Rock's Central High School, and again in James Meredith's 1962 challenge to segregation at the University of Mississippi. Both times, a Southern governor squares off with a U.S. president, violence erupts -- and integration is carried out.
Director: Judith Vecchione
Writer: N/A
8.5/1039 votesLoading...#11 - Ain't Scared of Your Jails, 1960-1961
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 2/4/1987
Black college students take a leadership role in the civil rights movement as lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South. "Freedom Riders" also try to desegregate interstate buses, but they are brutally attacked as they travel.
Director: Orlando Bagwell
Writer: Steve Fayer
8.4/1045 votesLoading...#12 - Mississippi, Is This America, 1962-1964
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 2/18/1987
Mississippi's grass-roots civil rights movement becomes an American concern when college students travel south to help register black voters and three activists are murdered. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenges the regular Mississippi delegation at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City.
Director: Orlando Bagwell
Writer: Steve Fayer
8.4/1055 votesLoading...#13 - Bridge to Freedom, 1965
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 2/25/1987
A decade of lessons is applied in the climactic and bloody march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. A major victory is won when the federal Voting Rights Bill passes, but civil rights leaders know they have new challenges ahead.
Director: Callie Crossley, James A. DeVinney
Writer: Callie Crossley, James A. DeVinney
7.8/1021 votesLoading...#14 - The Time Has Come, 1964-1965
Season 2 Episode 1 - Aired 1/15/1990
After a decade-long cry for justice, a new sound is heard in the civil rights movement: the insistent call for power. Malcolm X takes an eloquent nationalism to urban streets as a younger generation of black leaders listens. In the South, Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) move from "Freedom Now!" to "Black Power!" as the fabric of the traditional movement changes.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
The Best Episodes of Eyes on the Prize
Every episode of Eyes on the Prize ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Eyes on the Prize!
The definitive story of the Civil Rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement...
Genre:Documentary
Network:PBS
Best Episodes Summary
"The Promised Land, 1967-1968" is the best rated episode of "Eyes on the Prize". It scored 8.9/10 based on 17 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 2/5/1990. This episode scored 0.0 points higher than the second highest rated, "Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More, 1964-1972".