ProPublica reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones; Fred Freiberg, Executive Director of the Fair Housing Justice Center; and Betsy Julian, former Housing and Urban Development executive, discuss why the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which was supposed to help integrate cities, has gone largely unenforced, and what HUD should do to integrate cities. Nikole Hannah-Jones has been reporting on the topic for ProPublica, and you can read her articles here, and she's the author of a Kindle single called Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law.

"America is being forced to face itself," James Farmer proclaims in this 1963 Overseas Press Club appearance, before discussing the upcoming march on Washington and the historical roots of the civil rights struggle.

Tanner Colby points out that while racial equality is the law of the land, actual integration is still hard to find, and that in most of the country, black people and white people don’t spend much time together—at work, school, church, or anywhere. Colby set out to discover why, and in Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America he chronicles America’s relationship with race and integration.

Tanner Colby is what you might call a typical, liberal, city-dwelling, 30-something white guy. But one day he looked around and realized something: Despite living in Brooklyn, one of the most diverse cities in the world, he had no black friends.

Tanner Colby points out that while racial equality is the law of the land, actual integration is still hard to find, and that in most of the country, black people and white people don’t spend much time together—at work, school, church, or anywhere. Colby set out to discover why, and in Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America he chronicles America’s relationship with race and integration.

A small town in Minnesota is trying to make a big change. The people of Bemidji, Minnesota are building bridges between the white and the Native communities by making the signs in public buildings and many businesses both in Ojibwe and English. 

If all commenters are ticking time bombs waiting to go off, then rule one is - don’t light the fuse by responding directly. But as a professional writer and critic, Lee Siegel had had enough. So he used a pseudonym to respond. In an interview from 2008, Siegel explains the hard-won lessons from his trip to the trenches.

Anika - Officer Officer

It has been 56 years since the Supreme Court struck down segregation in Brown vs. Board of Education. A new book, “Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation,” puts forward the notion that desegregation's positive changes have come along with some unintended side effects. Stuart Buck, the book's author, argues that the criticism successful black students often receive from their peers – that they are “acting white” – is largely a consequence of how our schools were desegregated.

To commemorate the NAACP's Centennial, we take you to Franklin County, a rural area of 40,000 people in the southern part of Middle Tennessee. In 1958, two black women — Mrs. Johnnie Fowler, and Mickey Marlow — and one white man — Scott Bates — formed the area's first branch of the NAACP, the "Franklin County Branch." It's one of the few branches nationwide where female activists, and not men, led the town's desegregation efforts. One woman is still alive to tell the story of their struggle: Ms. Sarah Staten.