Fifty years ago this summer, at the March On Washington, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech that forever altered the national conversation around race and injustice in America. He spoke of his Dream -- a vision of an America where individuals were judged not by "the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Despite the remarkable progress made in the nearly 100 years since slavery had been abolished, King declared that day that blacks in America were "still not free."
Five decades later, in the shadow of the death of Trayvon Martin, Americans are once again fiercely debating race. What does it mean to live in a country with a black president, but one where he, too, can relate to racial profiling? Where we have African-American entertainers topping the charts, but far more people struggling to get by? How far have we really come?
In a weeklong series, The Huffington Post will examine the pain and the promise of Black America in 2013. We'll look at poverty and joblessness, health care, crime and incarceration, barriers to civic participation, the Obama administration’s record, education and striking examples of black progress against long odds.
Each of our stories will examine how far we have come, and what we still have left to do, to reach Dr. King’s longed-for mountaintop.