Today we have Jared Ball, Richard Purcell and Todd Steven Burroughs on the show to talk about the new Eyes On The Prize documentary as well as the original series that aired in the late 1980s. Jared Ball is a Professor of Communication Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD., and is the curator of the multimedia website imixwhatilike.org. Ball is also the author of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power (Palgrave 2020). Richard Purcell is a researcher, teaches and writes about film and media, black literature, poetry, music, and other forms of black performance and visual art. His first book Race, Ralph Ellison and American Cold War Intellectual Culture, explored how race, and particularly the debate over “the Negro Problem” in American literature, functioned generatively for US State anticommunist ideology and global hegemony yet also allowed for counter-hegemonic democratic ideas to emerge from black writers during the cultural Cold War. Todd Steven Burroughs is a journalist, historian and popular culture geek. A Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, he is a lifelong student of the history of Black media. He is the author of Warrior Princess: A People’s History of Ida B. Wells and Marvel’s Black Panther: A Comic Book Biography, From Stan Lee to Ta-Nehisi Coates, both published by Diasporic Africa Press.

This is Part 1 of a two-part episode. Part 2 is free to all paid subscribers over at www.patreon.com/posts/57276715. Become a paid subscriber for $5/month over at patreon.com/champagnesharks and get access to the entire archive of subscriber-only episodes, the Discord voice and chat server for patrons, detailed show notes for certain episodes, and our newsletter.

Co-produced & edited by Aaron C. Schroeder / Pierced Ears Recording Co, Seattle WA (www.piercedearsrec.com). Opening theme composed by T. Beaulieu. Closing theme composed by Dustfingaz (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRazhu_)