--- title: Bree Newsome on Trayvon Martin's Link to Emmett Till description: Watch an exclusive clip from 'Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now' canonical: https://time.com/4228372/trayvon-martin-emmett-till-video/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-02-25T18:00:16.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T15:10:33.185Z article:section: History og:title: Bree Newsome on Trayvon Martin's Link to Emmett Till og:description: Watch an exclusive clip from 'Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now' og:url: https://time.com/4228372/trayvon-martin-emmett-till-video/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt146ececfe7f7f5ed/69887e1a5f570f50f5b1fb1c/eotp-then-and-now.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: EOTP Then and Now og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Bree Newsome on Trayvon Martin's Link to Emmett Till twitter:description: Watch an exclusive clip from 'Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt146ececfe7f7f5ed/69887e1a5f570f50f5b1fb1c/eotp-then-and-now.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Bree Newsome: Trayvon Martin Was 'Emmett Till of My Time'  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Feb 25, 2016 6:00 PM UTC  A scene from the World special 'Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now' A scene from the World special 'Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now'World Channel  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Feb 25, 2016 6:00 PM UTC In 1987, when the landmark television documentary series _Eyes on the Prize_ first aired, TIME’s Richard Zoglin noted that while the archival “footage \[used in the film\] looks like a quaint relic… not very long ago it had the immediacy of the evening news.” About 30 years later, the irony in that assessment is clear: Eyes _on the Prize_ traced the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, and a second part brought the series into the ’80s, but many of the scenes it captured have been echoed in recent headlines. From [the death of Trayvon Martin](http://time.com/3815606/police-violence-timeline/)—exactly four years ago Friday—to President Obama’s White House[ meeting with Black Lives Matter](http://time.com/4228135/president-obama-black-lives-matter-civil-rights-meeting/) activists and earlier civil rights activists, many people have [seen](http://time.com/3150053/ferguson-civil-rights-movement/) (or refuted) the [connection](http://time.com/3734911/selma-ferguson-civil-rights/) between the two moments in time. That connection is the subject of a new half-hour special _Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now_, which will be [broadcast](http://worldchannel.org/programs/eyes-on-the-prize/) this weekend on public television’s WORLD Channel, leading into a rebroadcast of both parts of the original _Eyes on the Prize_. As seen in this extended interview segment with activist Bree Newsome, at least for some of those who represent the “now” part of the story, the link between the two eras provides more than context. For Newsome, the Trayvon Martin case was “kind of like the Emmett Till of my time.” The case surrounding the 1955 murder of Till, a Chicago teenager, and the subsequent confessions of his acquitted killers served as an early [catalyst](http://time.com/4008545/emmett-till-history/) for many people to acknowledge that the problem of race in America could no longer be watched for a distance; for Newsome, Martin’s death did the same. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4228372/trayvon-martin-emmett-till-video/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4228372/trayvon-martin-emmett-till-video/"},"headline":"Bree Newsome: Trayvon Martin Was 'Emmett Till of My Time'","datePublished":"2016-02-25T18:00:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T15:10:33.185Z","description":"Watch an exclusive clip from 'Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now'","url":"https://time.com/4228372/trayvon-martin-emmett-till-video/","keywords":["Civil Rights","Television","movies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt146ececfe7f7f5ed/69887e1a5f570f50f5b1fb1c/eotp-then-and-now.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt146ececfe7f7f5ed/69887e1a5f570f50f5b1fb1c/eotp-then-and-now.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"EOTP Then and Now","caption":"A scene from the World special 'Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now'","creditText":"World Channel","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/civil-rights/","name":"Civil Rights"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4228372/trayvon-martin-emmett-till-video/","name":"Bree Newsome: Trayvon Martin Was 'Emmett Till of My Time'"}}]}] ```