In a turbulent year for race relations, has anything changed?

GWEN IFILL:

Before we go tonight: This weekend, I traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, to the Circular Congregational Church for a town hall meeting on race.

We were just blocks away from Emanuel AME Church, where nine black worshipers attending Bible study were gunned down in June. We spoke with local residents and national experts and activists about Greece, recovery, the Confederate Flag, and whether black lives matter.

In a "PBS NewsHour"/Marist poll conducted last week before the town hall, we found widespread agreement about the scope of the problem; 60 percent of whites and 56 percent of blacks say race relations have gotten worse in the past year. But when we asked if African-Americans and whites have the same job opportunities, for example, 76 percent of black respondents said, no, they don't, while 52 percent of whites said, yes, they do.

And when we asked whether the police treat blacks and whites equally, 8 percent of African-Americans said yes, compared to 42 percent of whites.

At the town hall, I asked Umi Selah, who founded a called the Dream Defenders after Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida in 2012, whether anything has changed.

UMI SELAH, Dream Defenders:

What we have learned in the past year is not that black lives matter, but black deaths matter. That's the only time people wake up. That's the only time people react.

But, in South Carolina and around the country, if the politicians who are touting that black lives matter really care, there would be health care for black families, so they could provide for better qualities of living. There would be quality education in the schools, if you really cared about black lives. There wouldn't be mass incarceration if you really cared about black lives.

GWEN IFILL:

You can watch "America After Charleston" in full tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on most PBS stations. It will also be streaming live on our home page.