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Carol Zachary was 9 when her grandfather gave her an invitation to a hanging he attended in 1917. She peppered him with questions, but the meaning of his gesture still remains a mystery, even today.
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Central High School in Tuscaloosa, Ala., was once considered a model of desegregation. Today, the school's population is 99 percent black. One family's story underscores three generations of change.
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Screenwriter John Ridley hopes the movie will prompt honest exchanges about the nation's history that focus on discovery and introspection, rather than guilt, shame or anger.
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Kate Byroade had always known her ancestors were slave owners, but she had been told their slaves were treated well. Understanding the truth took her on a difficult lifelong journey.
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Robert Goins was tracing his genealogy when he found his ancestors' names listed among livestock and farm implements in a plantation ledger. With that painful discovery, he kept digging until he found a very different story: that of a great-great-great-grandfather who lived as a freeman.
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Growing up, Melanie Vanderlipe Ramil wanted to be as "non-Filipino" as possible. One way, she decided, was to stop eating rice. Now 31, Ramil has become the family's champion of its Filipino food traditions.
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Alex Sugiura says he understands why people ask. "I have always thought I've had a particularly strange face," he explains. And the query, he says, gives him a chance to really talk about what it means to be mixed-race in America.
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Clarence Jones played an integral but mostly unseen role in the 1963 March on Washington. As Martin Luther King Jr.'s legal adviser, Jones assisted in drafting King's landmark speech, and drew from a recent event in Birmingham, Ala., to craft one of the speech's signature lines.
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In August 1963, Robert Avery of Gadsden, Ala., was 15 and active in the civil rights movement. He and two friends were bent on participating in the March on Washington, but with little money, they had no choice but to hitchhike — on Southern roads that could be dangerous for segregation opponents.
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When civil rights worker Jack Hansan traveled to Washington to participate in the march, the fear of violence breaking out was very real. But the father of four knew he had to be there, not just to witness history, but also to play a part in changing it.