Color Lines: The Troubled Dreams of Racial Harmony in an American Town

Mike Kelly, a longtime columnist for the Bergen (NJ) Record, tells the story of the murder of a black youth by a white police officer in Teaneck, New Jersey, and the riot, protests, and trial that followed, through the eyes of the town's residents. He shows how the dilemmas of race still exert a powerful hold on American life, even in one of the first communities to voluntarily integrate its schools in the late 1950s, and contrasts the idealism of the past with new realities.