Author William Bradford Huie discusses his book "Three Lives for Mississippi;" reads passages from book.

Studs Terkel presents a program in honor of the birthday of abolitionist and African American leader Frederick Douglass, including excepts from Terkel's 1964 interview with African-American scholar, author and social historian Lerone Bennett. Terkel reads at length from Douglass' autobiography, "My Bondage and My Freedom," focusing on Douglass' interactions with slave owners Hugh and Sophia Auld.

Using the backdrop of James Baldwin's "Nobody Knows My Name" and Baldwin's feelings that Blacks were ashamed of where they came from, Terkel interviews Professor and Chairman of the Political Science Department of Roosevelt University on his book coauthored with Stokely Carmichael entitled" Black Power: Politics of Liberation in America". Hamilton states that Blacks were taught to hate themselves and leave school believing that. Institutional racism and the deliberate oppression it creates, holds blacks back. Blacks are left out of crucial decision making processes that concern them.

Content Warning: This conversation includes racially and/or culturally derogatory language and/or negative depictions of Black and Indigenous people of color, women, and LGBTQI+ individuals. Rather than remove this content, we present it in the context of twentieth-century social history to acknowledge and learn from its impact and to inspire awareness and discussion. When she was a teenager, Sister Mary William told her parents that she wanted to become a nun. Sister Mary wanted to become a nun so that she could love and help many people.

Discussing the book "Race hoss: big Emma's boy" with the author Albert Race Sample. Includes Sample reading a section of the book.

Interviewing Chicagoan Myra Alexander. An ordinary citizen who participated in the Civil Rights Movement, Alexander traveled to Washington, DC for the March on Washington in 1963, attended all of Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches and marches in Chicago.

Studs Terkel interviews Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the home of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. They discuss King's "I Have a Dream" speech that he made in 1963, at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. At the end of the program there are various gospel music selections featuring Jackson and others.

Alfreda Wells, the youngest child of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, talks about her mother's life and work as an investigative journalist and strong champion of civil and women's rights. This version does not have music.