America Beyond the Color Line

Harvard humanities professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. surveys the state of black America in a two-part report. In Part 1, Gates finds progress in "the new South" and regression in "the parallel universe" occupied by Chicago's black underclass. The good news: a black mayor and police chief in Memphis; a "colorblind" Army (seen at Fort Benning, Ga.). But in Chicago, Gates meets a young man who takes home $600 a month at a fast-food restaurant but says he could make $6000 a day selling drugs.