Segregation Now, Still

Did you know that in Alabama, school segregation is still legal? Did you know that the poll tax, once used to disenfranchise black voters, is still on the books? Of course, federal law overrides any local laws still on the books, but the language in the state constitution providing for poll taxes and for separate schools for white and "colored" children was never removed. Now, here's the kicker: On Nov. 2, 2004, Alabama voters rejected a proposed amendment to the constitution that would have removed these segregationist references.

Among the public figures who led the opposition to this amendment are the head of the Alabama Christian Coalition, and Roy Moore, the former chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court who put a two-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the Supreme Court's rotunda, and refused to obey a federal court order to remove it.