One of the pivotal moments in the struggle for civil rights came in May 1963, when hundreds of children faced police dogs, fire hoses and arrest, to march against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. As the 50th anniversary approaches, we speak with some of those who participated as children.

Watch an extended interview with Freeman Hrabowski, president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who at the age of 12 was one of many children arrested and put in jail for protesting segregation in Birmingham.

Her letters, papers, photographs, and library all remain inaccessible to the public, so historians and scholars are unable to tell her story in full.

“I marvel at people’s ability to not only live through what they experienced, but not to become consumed by hatred," says ethics and black church studies professor Angela Sims. "They recognized that even in the midst of evil, God was still with them.”

Is the same-sex-marriage debate in black churches really about religion, the Bible, or equal rights? The issue has divided many pastors and their congregations.

The nation's largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is expected to elect its first African-American president this June in New Orleans. His name is Fred Luter, and he says the SBC has "a heart for reaching people in difficult times."

Generations of African slaves found a powerful way of singing through suffering in spirituals that were rooted in biblical stories and images.

People of faith, black and white, need to be involved in resolving conflict through means that are other than violent, says Harold Dean Trulear, who teaches applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity.

Watch more of our discussion in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case about racial disparities in American society, religious ideas on human dignity, and revenge versus justice in contemporary culture.

"We've come a long way as a nation where there's a racial issue, but we still have a long, long, long way to go," says Rev. Fred Luter Jr., who is expected to become the first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention.