March 7 marks the 50th anniversary of the bloody attack on civil rights protestors in Selma. Author and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson in his new book From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History tells what has changed and what hasn't in America since Selma.

Los Angeles, CA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/24/2015 --Author and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson says that on the 50th anniversary of the Selma march, March 7 blacks are better educated, more prosperous, own more businesses, hold more positions in the professions, have more elected officials, and high ranking corporate officials, managers, executives than ever before. Yet the towering racial improvements that the march ushered in mask the harsh reality that the times and challenges are far different and in some ways far more daunting today.

Hutchinson says that the black poor organizationally fragmented and politically rudderless. The black poor lacking competitive technical skills and professional training, and shunned by many middle-class black leaders, became expendable jail and street and cemetery fodder. Some turned to gangs, guns, and drugs to survive.

He says that there's the crisis problems of family breakdown, the rash of shamefully failing public schools, racial profiling, urban police violence, the obscene racial disparities in the prison and criminal justice system, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. These are beguiling problems that sledgehammer the black poor. He notes there's the hostility and indifference of many whites to social programs, education, civil rights and civil liberties. He will have to deal with the reality that race matters in America can no longer be framed exclusively in black and white. Latinos and Asians have become major players in the fight for political and economic empowerment.

Hutchinson assesses in vivid detail the challenges and perils of the last fifty years in his new book From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History From King to Obama

About From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History
He spotlights many of the leading figures in the forefront of the civil rights and social, and cultural change movement in America in From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History. He tells how far America has come in fifty years since Selma and how much further it still has to go.