Ten years ago, Siler City, North Carolina, was a black and white town of segregated communities with a shared geography and an unsettled history. This quiet, rural southern town is a "laboratory" for the national transformation that is fundamentally altering America's sense of itself. The program addresses the following questions: how does rapid change in racial demographics affect small-town America? What happens when white people and white culture no longer dominate? What visions of the future do residents have? Does the future more closely resemble the country's racialized and segregated past? Is America going back to the future? Or is the nation seeing the declining significance of race? Utilizing the writing of Eric Liu and Ruben Martinez and directed by John Valadez, this episode explores the power and identity in small-town America.

Note: This is part 1 of a series of 4 parts.