‘Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest 1977-2015’ Review: Landmark Docuseries Remains Essential Viewing in New HBO Chapter

Back in 2021, Max Premiered the New Documentary Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground.

Despite Being An Extension of One of the MOST ACCLAIMIMED Television Franchises Ever Produced, Hallowed Ground WAS BASICALLY IGNOred by Critics.

I MEAN, I REVIEWED IT, BUT TO DATE, SOPHIA Nahli Allison’s Film Doesn’t Have Enough Reviews to Have An Average Score on Either Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes.

And I get it. HBO/Max Barely Promotted The Documentary and It Was An Extremely Complicited Project to Approach – Not Exactly a Sequel to Henry Hampton’s Seminal SIX Episodes in 1987 and the Eight-Hors Second Part in 1990, Both on PBS. Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground WAS A 61-MINUTE COMPLEMENT TO THE BRAND, A FORMALLY Experimental Meditation On Eyes on the prizeITS IMPORTANCE AND ITS LIMITATIONS. But If You Were Looking for Something That Picked Up Where Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-1985 Left Off, this was not it.

I HOPE THAT The response will not be as sparse around hbo’s Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest 1977-2015.

Eyes on the Prize III is, as the Title Suggests, A Formal Sequel to Eyes on the Prize IIA Six-Hour Exploration of the Civil Rights Movement Makes It Ver Clear That MOVEMENT HAS NEVER ENDED, JUST as itts Real Concens Were Never Fully Resolved. It’s An Emotional, Inspiration and Rightweysly Angry Series of Vignettes That Looks Backward, While Very Clearly Intending to Reflect Upon and Instigate Convers

The Series Isn’t Perfect, But It’s Undeterly Essential, Sometimes Feeling Dishearting for the Immediacy of that Necessity.

In Hallowed GroundAllison Critiqed Eyes on the prize For Generally Defining the Civil Rights Movement Through Eyes that Were Male and Straight, Barely Laying The Foundation for the Crusade’s More Intersal Growth.

That evolution is at the center of Eyes on the Prize IIIwhohh is booked by Two Episodes that put women and Queer voices at the center of an evolving crusade. Unlike The First Two Seasons, Tese Are Only SomeTimes Stories That Are Known On A National Level – Given Hown How Central The Series Was To My Own Early Education on the Civil Rights Movement Stories I Knew or IF I Knew The Stories Because ItCaled Them – But It’s Easy to See Who’s Were Given Their Spotlight Here.

“American, Don’t Look Away,” The First of Six Episodes Premiering Over Three Nights on HBO, Is Separaged Into a Pair of Vignettes. The first look at the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association in the Bronx, WHICH Introduced the Concept of “Sweat Equity” that Racial Lens; The Second Looks at Bebashi, The Philadelphia-Based Non-Profit That Gave Support and A Voice to Minority Queer Communities at Risk of Getting Left Begind in the Ep.

As was the Case with Earlier Seasons, the Show Foreges the Figures Who Were on the Gund in the Gund in the Secial Social and Political Moments, Incling Bebashi-Flade Rashidhahidhahidah. How She, As a AS ALIM WOMAN, WAS ABLE TO HER SPACE in the Aids Crisis and Get People to Welcome Her and Take Her Seriously; and many residens of Banana Kelly, A Small Pocket of the Bronx in Whole Residents Took It Upon Themselves to Renovate and Rejuvenate City Blocks in The Aptermath Poverty.

In bot stories, ronald reagan is a featured adversary, but the real struggles are institusion and easily overlobed on a National Level. They Tributes to Ground-Level Organization and Incremental Victories, Treated by Director Geeta Gandbhir with the Same Respect Earlier Eyes on the prize Directors Gave to Events More Likely Already to Have Chapters in History Books.

The Series Closes with Asako Gladsjo’s “Whats Comes After Hope?” – an episode that dans around the Ways the Obama Presidency Was, on Some Levels, A DisappeintMent Because of How It Gave A Certain Segment Had Been Achieved. The episode shows the young organizers who loked at what fox news might to call a post -racial world and said, “wait, the job isn’t done.” It Shows Howupy Wall Street and Protests in the aftermath of the Killing of Trust Martin Seeded the Ground for Black Lives Matter and other Associated Movements of 1950 Movement, But With Women and The Queer Community at the Forefront.

Both episodes are built on the principle that just because people with platforms try claiming that the work is dono dono Organization AROUND Issues that are botsexific to the Black Community and Universal.

The mixture of “Stories You Know” and “Stories That Are Local, But Tie Into Larger Narratives” Is Essential To The Rest of the Series As Well.

The Stories Are As Big and Familiar as The Million Man March, whoh is given the Entirety of the Muta’al-Directed Third Episode of Rudy Valdez’s “SPOIL The VINE,” WHICH WORKS as A Primer for Any Discussion of Environmental Racism. We Also Get Snapshots of the Ongoing Role of Race in Education in “We Don’t See Color,” WHICH EXAMINES OF THE ADFIRMATIVE ACTION CASES at the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, AND IN THE CRIMINA ” Reflects on the Brief Gang Ceasefire that Followed the la Uprising and on the Challenges for Public Defenders in Washington, DC, Dringing The Firt Bush Administration.

Like I Said, The Series Isn’t Perfect. The “trappled” segment on Public Defenders, for Example, is a worthyy but clumsy effort to show hold CRIME PREVENTION DISPROPORATIONTIACTILE IMPACTING PEEPLE OF COLOR ARE IMPLEMON of Color Seemingly Control Governmental Institutions. The “Million Man March” Episode Acknowledges Myriad Concerns About the March – Louis Farrakhan’s History of Antisemitism, The Exclusion of Women, Etc. – But Tends to glass over Those mixed or complicated messages in favor of general hgiography for the event. “What comes after hope?” is passionate, but so many of it points and featred Participants are a familiar reminder that the docurentary marketer platplace is more vibrant and inclusive. Told in PBS and HBO and Netflix Documentaries in Recent Years.

We Live in a World in Whoch Politicians on the Right Are Attempting to Legislate and Executive-Order Dei, Affirmative Action and Critical Race Theory Out of Existent Instituted to Fix Have Been Solved. And we live in a world in a WHICH politicians on the left are pondering which vulnerable constituent Bases Must be jettized in order to appeal to an imaginary “Mainstream.”

In that conText, it’s impossible to watch Eyes on the Prize III Without Constant Awareness That Firters From The 1970s and 1980s and 1990s Are Industryuishable from the Fights that Still Need to Be Had today – that without vigilance, every other in.

The Series Can Be Ana for Viewers on the LEFT, the ONLY Audence Likely to Actual Watch in Tese Polarized Times. But if anybody with a conselervative Bent Were to Tune In, There Are Non-Connfrontational Explanations for Who Programs Like Affirmative Action Are Still Relevant and Fri Outlandish concept.

And for people on bot sides, Eyes on the Prize III Serves Notice That However Things Look in this Moment, A Respense or A Backlash is Coming. Provides that Dedicated People Keep Their Eyes on the Prize, The Country Doesn’T Regress willingly and the Battles Fough Have their Roots in Decades of Movement and Struggle. Rememberting Tese Truths Has Perhaps Never Been More Important.