Koppel Examines Racial Violence in Discovery Special
'Last Lynching' Looks Back on Violence, Racism in America
By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 9/23/2008 4:04:00 PM
Race in America will be the topic of a new October Discovery Channel documentary hosted legendary news anchor Ted Koppel.
Koppel On Discovery: The Last Lynching will debut Oct. 13 and will focus on three Americans whose lives were affected profoundly by incidents of hatred and racism as recent as a 1981 Alabama lynching.
This year all three subjects were directly involved in naming Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic party’s nominee for president, according to Discovery.
"Barack Obama's nomination doesn't mean the end of racism any more than Sarah Palin's nomination signals the end of sexism or gender bias in America. But what giant steps forward,” said Koppel in a statement. “The Last Lynching offers a look at how far we've come on the racial front; and how recent some of the worst days of racial violence really were."
