Henry Hampton (d.
1998)
An historian and documentary filmmaker in the United States. President of Blackside, Inc. and executive producer as well as conceiver of the documentary Eyes on the Prize. Blackside made a number of large documentary projects after Eyes, such as Malcom X: Make it Plain, The Great Depression, Eyes on the Prize II (a continuation of the history), and I'll Make Me a World: A Century of African-American Art.
Mr. Hampton was extremely active in civil rights acting both as historian and as documentarian; both roles sprung from his involvement in his younger days as an active participant in several of the major Civil Rights marches and demonstrations. Despite being afflicted with polio, he completed the March to Selma. Handicapped by the disease in later years, he continued to defy it, beginning a wheelchair basketball league in his adopted hometown of Roxbury, MA. He succumbed in 1998 to complications brought on by aggressive treatment for Oates cell lung cancer that he had undergone in 1990.