Eyes on the Prize

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.

In the 1970s, anti-discrimination 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.

Black activism is increasingly met with a violent and unethical response from law enforcement agencies. In Chicago, two Black Panther Party leaders are killed by police acting on information supplied by an FBI informant. In the wake of Nixon's call to "law and order," arrests push the poor conditions at Attica to the limit; an inmate takeover calling attention to the conditions leaves 43 dead.

A renewed push for unity galvanizes Black America. Cassius Clay challenges America to accept him as Muhammad Ali. Howard University students fight to bring the Black consciousness movement and African heritage inside the Black institution. Black officials and activists organize the National Black Political Convention in an attempt to create a unified Black response to growing repression.

Martin Luther King, Jr. stakes out new ground for himself and the fragmenting Civil Rights Movement. King opposes the war in Vietnam. His SCLC embarks on the Poor People's Campaign. In the midst of organizing, King detours to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, where he is assassinated. His death and the failure of his final campaign mark the end of a major stream of the movement.

The call for Black Power takes various forms across communities in Black America. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes wins as the first Black mayor of a major American city. The Black Panther Party, armed with books, programs, and guns, is born in Oakland. Substandard teaching practices prompt parents to gain control of a school district but lead them to a showdown with New York City's teachers' union.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC come north to help Chicago's civil rights leaders in their nonviolent struggle against segregated housing. In Detroit, a police raid in a Black neighborhood sparks an uprising, leaving 43 people dead. The Kerner Commission finds that America is becoming "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal" - President Lyndon Johnson ignores the report.

After a decade-long cry for justice, a new sound is heard in the Civil Rights Movement: the 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 move from "Freedom Now!" to "Black Power!" as the fabric of the traditional movement changes.