clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

Martin Luther King Jr.

Forty years after the shot rang out, race fears still haunt the US

Life has changed beyond recognition for many Americans since an assassin's bullet killed Martin Luther King in 1968. Yet despite the rise of a black middle class and Barack Obama's challenge for the White House, the racial divide still exists - and for an urban underclass, things have only got worse.

King died four decades ago at the end of an era of civil rights victories that ended racial segregation and won black Americans the vote

It was a struggle that finally cost him his life, felled at the Lorraine by a white assassin's bullet

black America itself is almost unrecognisable from King's time. It has been transformed, both for the better and for the worse

Obama is running for President

Black politicians hold top offices in cities and states across the continent

large black middle class every bit as wealthy, suburban and professional as

since 1968, much of black America has also been beset by disaster