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.

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.

If the right to vote is sacred, and depriving someone of that right is morally wrong, then what to make of the tough new voter identification requirements being proposed across the country?

"Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind in the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again once you’ve been branded a felon," says Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow."

Watch more of our conversation with author Michelle Alexander about crime, the war on drugs, and the disproportionately high number of African-Americans in prison.

“American politics is broken today, and Dr. King’s message, his life, his values and virtues can offer us a strategy for healing what is broken.”

The president of Morehouse College speaks about Martin Luther King Jr.'s religious maturation and about the need for Americans to have "the moral will to act" in the face of economic disparities between blacks and whites.

We asked some of the first visitors to the MLK Memorial on the National Mall to share their thoughts on its significance and on the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.