NEW PRIZE FOR THESE EYES

Following in the footsteps of civil rights heroes.

Years before he became best known as a Fox News political analyst, Williams wrote his first book, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, a companion to the acclaimed documentary series that aired on PBS in 1987. Williams has followed that work with an examination of what he calls America’s Second Civil Rights Movement. “They cannot fairly be compared,” he rightfully observes of the two distinct struggles for equal rights. “This Second Civil Rights Movement had to deal with persistent, deep-seated cultural issues that the First Movement had left unresolved, and in some cases, new issues that arose in the backlash to its legislative and political victories.” Not surprisingly, Williams centers much of the book on Barack Obama, who has credited the Civil Rights Movement for making possible his own rise to power. Williams explores the hope, backlash, and disappointment that Obama’s presidency elicited, addressing police violence against Black Americans, demographic shifts, academic and economic progress and regression, and the Trump and Biden presidencies. “There is no real argument about the fact that a large percentage of Black and brown people continue to struggle to survive in twenty-first-century America,” he writes. “But whites in Trump’s Republican Party shun the history of America’s racial oppression as well as stories of racial inequality today. Instead, they express fear of the government discriminating against white people.” The case of Black Lives Matter is especially telling, Williams writes, noting how the movement went from “instant online sensation” to “high visibility scapegoat for the Republicans.” Generations after the Civil Rights Movement, it is clear that activists have much work ahead of them: They must still keep their eyes on the prize.

An important appraisal of the present-day struggle for civil rights.