The Civil Rights Movement died decades ago. Some say it succumbed with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in 1968. Maybe. Anyway, it's over. But racial discrimination remains. So how should prejudice continue to be fought?

Denise McNair, 11, who also attended our school, was one of the four little girls killed in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Her father was our milkman.

Two other black kids were killed in Birmingham the day the church was bombed - Sept. 15, 1963. Johnny Robinson, 16, was shot in the back by police. Two white boys shot Virgil Ware, 13, as he rode his bicycle.

That night, my father and other black men armed themselves, fearful that the violence that rocked the city after the bombing would make its way to the housing project where we lived.

My memories are vivid, as they are for others who lived through that era in towns where King and other civil rights stalwarts demonstrated. But countless Americans never had the experience. And others need to be reminded.

To help some of us remember, and to teach those who need to know, PBS is rebroadcasting the documentary Eyes on the Prize, which first ran on public television nearly two decades ago.

The film, now broken up into three two-hour episodes, will be shown on consecutive Mondays, beginning this week and ending Oct. 16. This is must-see TV.

With historical footage and contemporary interviews, the documentary traces the movement's roots, with emphasis on the years from the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., through the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Boston-based Blackside Inc., which produced the documentary, has received funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Annie E. Casey Foundation to conduct a national outreach campaign to stimulate new dialogue on race relations.

In addition to the film and the companion Eyes on the Prize book, by Juan Williams, I would recommend that anyone who really wants to know what it was like back then read historian Taylor Branch's civil rights trilogy - Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire and At Canaan's Edge.

Even better, seek out the movement participants still alive in communities across America and ask them what was it like. Then ask them how it ought to be now. Has their "dream" been fulfilled?

I was in Birmingham three weeks ago, staying at a nice hotel with no racial restrictions on who could be a guest. When I was a child, my mother had to hunt a place for me to go to the bathroom because downtown stores wouldn't let little black boys use theirs.

And economic opportunity exists. To varying degrees, to be sure. But who could deny that progress has occurred after driving through Atlanta's suburbs and feasting their eyes on all of the mostly black developments with houses starting at a half-million dollars?

A Census Bureau report released this year said the number of black-owned businesses in this country grew by 45 percent from 1997 through 2002, four times the rate for all businesses nationally. The figure reflects a huge increase in the African American middle class since the 1950s. But there are other statistics to consider.

For example: Black families' median household income, at about $30,000, is only slightly more than half of white families'. The black unemployment rate, at almost 10 percent, is nearly double that of whites. Fewer than half of African Americans own their homes, compared with nearly 75 percent of whites. The average net assets of white families is $88,000, compared with $6,000 for blacks.

Glaring racial disparities also exist in educational attainment and health care. Only 17 percent of blacks have a college degree, compared with 30 percent of whites. Nearly 20 percent of blacks have no health insurance, compared with 11 percent of whites. Black Americans are nearly 80 percent more likely than whites to live in a polluted neighborhood.

These numbers are the legacy of 400 years of slavery and discrimination that 50 years of civil rights laws and rules have not been able to erase. So what should Americans do about it?

Legal remedies make a difference, but America has grown weary of them. Indeed, in the last significant affirmative-action case - Grutter v. Bollinger - then-Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary."

That was three years ago. But nothing has happened since then to make me confident that the vestiges of slavery and racial discrimination will be forever gone by the time I celebrate my 75th birthday in 2028, God willing.

One day, all racial bias will end. But likely not until intermarriage, which racists fear, stops people from classifying themselves by skin color. That's going to take more than 25 years.

Such steps are best achieved when they result from heartfelt discussion and negotiation at the community level, the type of discussion that the Eyes on the Prize documentary hopes to evoke.

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