Hampton, Henry 1940–

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Henry Hampton 1940–

Documentary filmmaker, executive producer

Capturing an Era; Raising Youth Awareness

Twenty million television viewers watched in 1987 when the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS-TV) aired Henry Hampton’s documentary Eyes on the Prize. It was no surprise that this moving chronicle of America’s civil rights movement would become known as one of the greatest television events in U.S. history; its creator and executive producer, Henry Hampton, is among the leading filmmakers and social activists in the nation. In 1990 then-U.S. president George Bush named Hampton one of five Americans who made outstanding contributions to the humanities.

While Henry Hampton has a long list of accomplishments, he is probably most associated with the 14-hour film series Eyes on the Prize, which documents the civil rights movement from 1954 to 1980. The critically acclaimed series went on to win six Emmy Awards and an Academy Award nomination for best documentary in 1987. The Boston Globe called it “one of the most distinguished documentary series in the history of broadcasting.”

Hampton was born on January 8, 1940, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent surgeon and his wife. Polio struck Hampton when he was just 15 years old. He survived the often deadly disease, setting a precedent for a lifetime of success in the face of adversity. Hampton stayed in his hometown to attend Washington University, where, in 1961, he earned bachelors’ degrees in both English literature and premedi-cal studies. Two years later, he went to work for the Boston-based Unitarian Universalist Association as director of broadcasting and information.

In 1968 Hampton combined his media experience and humanitarian convictions by serving as the press officer for a group of religious leaders traveling the world on a peace mission. Working in association with the religious delegation, he met with some of the world’s most beloved pioneers of peace, including Indian politician Indira Gandhi. Hampton’s subsequent endeavors to use the media to spread awareness and understanding—often from a racial perspective—would later mark him as an ambassador of peace as well.

That same year, Hampton founded Blackside, Inc., the film and television production company that produced Eyes on the Prize. Hampton has served as president of the company since its inception, and he has either produced or been instrumental in the production of more than 60 films and

At a Glance…

Born Henry Eugene Hampton, Jr., January 8, 1940, in St. Louis, MO; son of Henry Eugene (a surgeon) and V. G. Hampton. Education: Washington University, B.A, 1961.

Documentary filmmaker and executive producer, Eyes on the Prize, 1987; Eyes on the Prize //, 1990; and The Great Depression, 1993. Unitarian Universalist Association, Boston, MA, director of broadcasting and information, 1963-68; press officer on World Peace Mission, 1968; president and founder, Blackside, Inc. (a film and television production company), Boston, 1968—. Chairman of the board of the Museum of Afro-American History through 1990; board member, Children’s Defense Fund and Boston Center for the Arts.

Member: International Documentary Association, Massachusetts Film Committee.

Awards: Loeb fellow, Harvard University, 1977; Roger Baldwin Award, Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union, 1987; Lyndhurst fellow, 1989; Charles Frankel Prize, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990; named by former President George Bush as one of five Americans who made outstanding contributions to the humanities, 1990; “Tribute to a Black American” award from the National Conference of Black Mayors, 1992; Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Commonwealth Award in the humanist category; honorary degrees from Washington University, Brandéis University, and Boston College, among others. Eyes on the Prize received six Emmy Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award in the documentary category.

Addresses: Office —Blackside, Inc., 486 Shawmut Ave., Boston, MA 02118-1863.

other media projects. Blackside’s releases aim to combine entertainment and social service. Among the company’s productions is Code Blue, a film designed to help recruit minority physicians; it has been in demand throughout the United States for over 20 years. Blackside has also produced multiple film series for the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Institute for Mental Health.

In 1977 Harvard University’s School of Design granted Hampton a Loeb fellowship to study constitutional limitations and the nature of media and government information programs. His studies focused on consumers’ and citizens’ rights to information. Since then, Hampton has been awarded more than 10 honorary degrees.

Witnessed Bloody March

In the mid-1980s, Hampton began his work on a two-part documentary of the civil rights movement called Eyes on the Prize. He was driven to make the documentary out of a potent curiosity for just why the civil rights movement occurred when it did and how it reached its feverish pace in the 1960s. His fascination with the movement was born out of his own experience as well, since as a young man he was witness to the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to the Alabama capital of Montgomery in protest of voting rights injustices, and to the dramatic clash between Alabama state troopers and the marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The timing of the film project was dire, however, since the U.S. government was cutting back its support of documentary filmmakers.

Though nearly bankrupt, Hampton went ahead with the series. The first six hours aired in 1987 and followed the American civil rights movement from 1954 to 1965. Eyes on the Prize II aired on PBS-TV in February of 1990, coinciding with the celebration of black history month. This second part of the series documented the civil rights struggle from 1966 to 1980. Providing a rare, comprehensive look at a watershed period in American history, Eyes on the Prize and Eyes on the Prize II are, according to Hampton in a Newsweek interview, “the country’s largest civil rights archive.”

Hampton’s creation of Eyes on the Prize for PBS in 1987 reflected his gift for marrying education and entertainment. He skillfully selected raw news footage from a vast array of historical events, such as Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man, the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, and the violent uprising that occurred when nine black school children were kept out of a white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. He even tracked down rare coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his aides debating strategy for the 1968 Poor People’s march on Washington. These glimpses into America’s past are juxtaposed with contemporary commentary and recollections from witnesses and survivors. Eyes on the Prize II, for example, covers the savage predawn shooting of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton (no relation to Henry Hampton) and Mark Clark in a Chicago police raid. The filmmaker brings a measure of the personal cost of this tragedy by interviewing the FBI informant whose infiltration of the Panthers led to the bloody raid. Many critics agreed that this weaving of past events and current recollection makes for both an accurate and emotionally poignant documentary series.

Capturing an Era; Raising Youth Awareness

In addition to capturing the injustice, pain, and despair of a frightening period in U.S. history, Hampton’s Eyes on the Prize films manage to highlight moments of great triumph in the civil rights era. For example, Eyes on the Prize II opens in 1966 with a 106-year-old black man registering to vote for the first time. A crowd surrounding the man, overcome with pride, hoists him on their shoulders and parades their elderly hero. Eyes on the Prize was such an engaging documentary that it captured over 20 million viewers with each airing and has been seen in dozens of countries and in hundreds of schools.

By chronicling the course of an American movement and bringing it to millions of viewers both in the United States and abroad, Hampton hoped to increase an understanding of social activism and promote discussion about the nation’s current racial climate. He claims to have aimed most especially to raise awareness among America’s youth about the fight for civil rights. But while Eyes on the Prize was seen by millions of viewers, few of them were teenagers. Though disappointed, Hampton was not surprised, telling Newsweek: “To them, the civil rights years are ancient history.” He explained that most of America’s youth are now far removed from the immediacy and urgency of the civil rights problem that plagued the country; those young people who have viewed Eyes on the Prize are, according to Hampton, typically shocked at what they see and unable to fathom the notion of separate drinking fountains, hotel rooms, and restaurant seating for blacks and whites.

Hampton’s research into the civil rights movement sparked his fascination with the Depression that struck the United States in the late 1920s, paralyzing the nation economically for most of the next decade. Thus, his next project was The Great Depression, a seven-hour series that aired on PBS-TV in the fall of 1993. The film makes it clear that this era was not just about the 1929 stock-market crash: this was a period of enormous growth in racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic violence, and discrimination. In some ways, then, the Depression nurtured the injustices that the civil rights movement would target in the 1950s.

Hampton told the Los Angeles Times that he wanted to make The Great Depression because both the Depression and the civil rights era mark “landmark moments, those crucial points when America shifts gear.” In addition, Hampton points to the 1920s and 1930s as a critical time in American history when themes of economic survival, class, welfare, immigration, and the need for strong leadership cut across racial lines. “People really don’t have any sense of how difficult the struggle was,” he commented in Emerge. “What we’re trying to show is that you can do successful history without it being all white or Afrocentric. The most effective kind of history is when you really do reflect the perspective of all people.” He concluded: “The lesson for the period of the Great Depression is that America as a whole was in jeopardy, as opposed to any particular minority.”

Critical responses to The Great Depression have been glowing. The Los Angeles Times proclaimed: “Henry Hampton’s latest documentary is a gift to viewers, another case of artfully joined scholarship and entertainment in a single slab of joltingly honest, stunningly good television.” And Time magazine called it “riveting … a painstakingly researched, artfully assembled, scrupulously evenhanded recreation of a turbulent, defining era in American history.”

A master of documentary filmmaking, Hampton seems to have perfected the art of mixing archival news footage with contemporary interviews. Some critics claim that his documentaries are so popular because of their emphasis on people and events rather than politics and statistics. He highlights the personal implications of historical events, which in turn tends to make the events themselves more meaningful to his audience. The Great Depression, for example, not only discusses economic hardship but contains wrenching footage of children who “ain’t et for three days,” and even a family driven by hunger to make a meal out of a dog.

Hardship Accompanied Success

While Eyes on the Prize and The Great Depression are arguably Hampton’s greatest works, both were made during periods of tremendous personal hardship. The Emmy Award-winning Eyes on the Prize was made without compromise despite near bankruptcy for both Hampton and Blackside, Inc. Even more astonishing was his seemingly successful fight against lung cancer while producing The Great Depression. Hampton told the Los Angeles Times that he was “surprised at people’s grit and their capacity to fight,” during the Depression; Hampton appears to have a bountiful supply of the same kind of grit.

As Henry Hampton has made great strides in his career as film and television producer, he has remained dedicated to a variety of philanthropic organizations. In 1990 he ended nearly 25 years of service as the chairman of the board of directors for the Museum of Afro-American History, during which he oversaw the restoration of the oldest standing African American church in the United States. In addition, he is also a board member of the Boston Center for the Arts and the Children’s Defense Fund. His greatest contribution, however, may be his own documentaries which, made from a humanitarian point of view, provide valuable chronicles of American history.

Henry Hampton’s future projects at Blackside, Inc. will, no doubt, continue to be educational and entertaining studies of the human condition. He is working on Songs of My People, a documentary with singer-songwriter Quincy Jones that examines the African American relationship to music. In the fall of 1993, he was completing work on a two-hour special on civil rights leader Malcolm X and a six-hour series for PBS-TV titled America’s War on Poverty. In an article that he wrote for the New York Times Book Review, Hampton commented, “Confronting racial issues positively and understanding the critical connection between that and the practice of true democracy is our challenge for the year 2000.”