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Martin Luther King, Jr. famously hoped for a day when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. It's been nearly 40 years since then, and commentator Aaron Freeman hopes for even more for his daughters. He wants to raise them as if "African-American" is not their primary identity, but one of many things they are, along with athletes, Chicagoans and scholars. The problem is that it's working. They have a different outlook than he does, and he's afraid they are a different race than he is. The struggle against racism has defined much of his life, and he fears that they don't even take racism personally.

NPR's Michele Norris talks with Whitney Dow and Marco Williams, producers/directors of the POV documentary Two Towns of Jasper airing on PBS stations next Wednesday. Dow and Williams talk about how they each directed a separate film crew in Jasper, Tex., during the trials of three white men for the murder of a black man, James Byrd, Jr. He was chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to death in 1998. Dow's crew of white filmmakers only interviewed white residents of the town. Williams' crew of black filmmakers only interviewed black residents of the town. The deliberate segregation of the film crews allowed residents to speak with a candor seldom seen on camera.

Robert O'Harrow, Jr. is a reporter for The Washington Post and an associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting. His new book is about how the government is creating a national intelligence infrastructure with the help of private companies as part of homeland security. Huge data-mining operations are contracted by the government to gather information on our daily lives. Information technology has enabled retailers, marketers, and financial institutions to gather and store data about us. O'Harrow's new book about this security-industrial complex is No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society.

He's played Robert Benchley and Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. He's been cast as an introspective dentist, an atomic scientist, a cop and Hamlet. Now, in the film Saint Ralph, Campbell Scott takes a turn as a priest coaching an unlikely marathoner.

In 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers, most of whom were black, went on strike in Memphis, Tenn., protesting horrendous working conditions and low wages. Martin Luther King, Jr. went to Memphis to lend his support to the striking sanitation workers. One of those on strike recalls his visit.

Hotez refused to agree to a vaccine debate with anti-vaccine Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr., an event proposed by podcaster Joe Rogan on Twitter this month.

Political trouble persists for Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS). The White House is holding Lott at distance. A Jan. 6 vote will decide if Lott stays as Senate Republican leader. Many in the party are worried that a continuing focus on Lott's racially insensitive remarks will alienate minorities. NPR's Michele Norris talks to Al Bartell, a member of the Grassroots Leadership Initiative for the Georgia State Republican Party; GOP fundraiser Harold E. Doley Jr.; and Michael Brady, president of the Palm Beach county chapter of the Florida Black Republican Council.

Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis in 1968 rallying for fair treatment and pay of African-American sanitation workers when he was assassinated. American history professor Michael Honey joins Fresh Air to discuss his book on the labor campaign King was leading at the time of his death.

The monument depicts the arms of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King wrapped around each other, based on a photograph taken after the 1964 announcement that MLK had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, forever changed the widening struggle for civil rights. Details of the day reveal King's mindset in the hours before he was killed. Also, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, one of King's contemporaries, reflects on the man behind the myth.