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.

“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.”

“The spirit of resilience is deep in the heart of the Sikh faith,” says Valarie Kaur, a Sikh woman from Auburn Seminary in New York. “Sikhs have died for their turbans, died for their faith, but drawn from their faith to rise up again and not be afraid.”

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."

"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.

The Southern Baptists try to broaden their appeal, the Catholic Bishops maintain their sex abuse policy, and the White House defends the US military mission in Libya.

Sixteen years after a mostly peaceful transition and elections that brought Nelson Mandela to power, the verdict on South Africa is decidedly mixed.

We’re segregated in housing. The job market is segregated, and we end up going to churches with people who look like us. Experts say US churches are ten times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in.

Read more of Lucky Severson’s interview about interracial churches with Rice University sociology professor Michael Emerson.

When was the last time Pennsylvania Avenue and Times Square and countless other locations across the country were packed with crowds at 1:00 in the morning following a presidential election? The same nation that elected George Bush by the hanging chads of 2000 has just given the presidency to someone who was relatively unknown at that time.