Henry Hampton

As founder and president of Blackside, Inc. since 1968, Henry Hampton's primary responsibilities are film and television concept development, marketing and corporate management. Hampton was the creator and executive producer of Eyes on the Prize, the award-winning 14-hour PBS film series on America's civil rights movement and co-author of the companion volume, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of America's Civil Rights Movement. Hampton also served as executive producer of The Great Depression, a seven-hour series broadcast on PBS in the fall of 1993, which received widespread critical acclaim and many awards including a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, a Columbus International Film and Video Festival Award and an Emmy Award; and Malcolm X: Make it Plain, a 1994 documentary which aired as part of public television's The American Experience series. He also was the executive producer of America's War on Poverty, broadcast in January 1995. In his years at Blackside, Hampton has produced or been responsible for more than 60 major films and media projects, including several for J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the United States National Institute of Mental Health and the United States Department of Commerce. From the late 1960s through 1990, Hampton chaired the Museum of Afro American History's board of directors, leading that organization's campaign to acquire and restore the African Meeting House on Boston's Beacon Hill, the oldest standing African-American church building in the United States. Hampton's 13 honorary degrees include one from his alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, Brandeis University, Boston College, and most recently from Tufts University in Boston. Among his many industry awards and community honors is the 1993 Ralph Lowell Award, considered the highest recognition in public television, presented by the Public Broadcasting Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In 1994 Hampton was the recipient of the first Harold C. Fleming Award recognizing "a lifetime of service in the field of political participation and community education against hatred in politics." In 1995 he received the first Heinz Family Foundation Award in the field of arts and humanities.