The effort comes as voter registration efforts, both in Texas and around the US have effectively stalled just months before the presidential election.

"Democracy was dying of too many lies long before this murder," Moyers tells Amanpour. "Unless we see the truth and act on it, we are going to run out of oxygen."

In the past two weeks, everything has changed… and nothing has changed. Two weeks ago tonight, 46-year-old Minneapolis man George Floyd was alive, going through his Sunday night as any one of us do, unaware—as we all are—of what the next day would bring.

Democracy in America has been a series of narrow escapes. We may be running out of luck, and no one is coming to save us. For that, we have only ourselves.

Protests continued for a tenth day today in the face of ongoing police brutality. That statement is going to anger some readers, but hoo, boy, the images of the police attacking peaceful protesters and journalists are going to be in textbooks in a few years, and our great grandchildren are going to ask how on earth this happened.

"I need to be clearer and louder in our community about what I believe our school is for. The purpose of our school isn’t simply to develop college and career ready students. I believe in my heart that developing citizens, with a clear and purposeful focus on social justice, is part of who we can and must be. But I need to say that and I need to say it loudly and publicly."

Slavery is our nation’s original sin; the treatment of people of color a blot on the history of a country “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Here, a variety of Moyers conversations with Michelle Alexander, Bryan Stevenson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maya Angelou, David Simon, and others offer a useful primer on the history of racism in the United States and its continuing impact.