Leid Stories - Racism In America: The Remarkable Sameness of Being - 02/04/13

On June 12, 1963, the very day that civil-rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Miss., four New York-based activists, all of them prominent in the struggle for equality, were asked in a wide-ranging discussion with Richard Heffner, host of "The Open Mind" (PBS), to assess the politics of race in America at the time. The four were: Alan Morrison, New York editor of Ebony magazine; Wyatt T. Walker, chief of staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and executive assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; James Farmer, national director of the Congress of Racial Equality; and Malcolm X, minister of the Nation of Islam's Mosque No.7 in Harlem.

Leid Stories revisits the historic roundtable, drawing startling comparisons between the response of the Kennedy administration to the critical issues cited by the leaders then and that of the Obama administration today. In 50 years, how far along is America on the road to racial equality and justice?