Eugene Robinson has a terrific, thoughtful column in the Washington Post today on the passing of Coretta Scott King and the state of black America:

When King, tragically, was stopped by an assassin's bullet, the remarkable cohort of lieutenants he had assembled took up his banner. One of them, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, eventually came to serve as the voice of black America -- a role he continues to fill.

But America has changed. Racism persists, all right; don't get me wrong. But it's different now, more subtle, a product of attitudes and not of Jim Crow laws. Record numbers of black Americans have entered the suburban middle class. Some have risen much higher: Several of the nation's biggest and richest companies -- Time Warner, Merrill Lynch, American Express -- are run by black men. The most powerful woman in television is black. The secretary of state is a black conservative . There is no one black leader, no one idea of black leadership. There are many leaders and many ideas.

At the same time, though, huge numbers of African Americans have been left behind -- in the decaying inner cities, in the rural South -- and they are in danger of simply being written off. In a knowledge-based economy, these millions of people are sending their children to schools too dysfunctional to teach them to read. The connections between African Americans who escaped and those who didn't seem to be growing more tenuous day by day.

Speaking of schools too dysfunctional to teach kids to read, check out John Stossel this morning. Our failing education system is of vital national interest for all Americans, and both parties continue to do much less than they should be doing to push through needed reforms.