Innumerable Gibbons
When the Civil Rights Movement is no longer needed, and we ask ourselves ‘What did it mean?,’ seems to me the answer will mean that it meant something universal. It meant something beyond Chicago and Detroit and Mississippi. Our own freedom is precious and important. But in the end what gives our movement its majesty is the example it set throughout the world for people of color. And for people who in any way were oppressed and found in that example a reason to hope and strive for a different life.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, from Eyes on the Prize, the foremost Civil Rights Movement documentary.