Michele Norris

Through powerful monologues, Anna Deavere Smith has tackled race riots, integration and health care. In Notes from the Field, she's using her characters to explore the school-to-prison pipeline.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is finishing a run on her latest work, "Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1,2 & 3)" at The Public Theater in New York.

NPR's Michele Norris continues her conversation with Marc Quarles for The Race Card Project. Quarles six words are: With Kids, I'm Dad; Alone: Thug.

A huge hit upon its release, the 1949 musical South Pacific still resonates with contributors to The Race Card Project — particularly a song about how prejudice is learned, not innate.

For the last three years, NPR's Michele Norris has asked people to share their six-word stories about race and cultural identity. The confrontation in Sanford, Fla., has been a running thread in the inbox of the Race Card Project since Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in 2012.

On June 11, 1963, Gov. George Wallace stood at the University of Alabama to block two black students attempting to cross the color line and register for classes. The event forever associated him with segregation. His daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, 63, is trying to shake that link.

President Obama has ordered 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan. The plan is to get the forces there by the summer of 2010, a very fast timeline. To make that happen will be a real challenge for the U.S. military — troops and their equipment will have to move halfway around the world to join the fight.

Afghanistan's election commission has cancelled plans for a presidential runoff vote, and declared Hamid Karzai the winner. The move followed a decision by Karzai's only remaining challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, to pull out of the race.

Supporters loyal to Iran's supreme leader took to the streets Tuesday at a massive rally organized by the clerical regime. Later, supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi staged another protest against the election results. Meanwhile, the government said it would recount some disputed ballots, and foreign media were barred from covering rallies in Tehran.

Ahmed Gailani, the first Guantanamo detainee to stand trial in federal court, arrived in New York Tuesday to stand trial for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. His case is part of a much broader national debate over how to handle the roughly 240 detainees being held at the camp.