From World War II until the 1970s, Tuskegee played a pivotal national role in issues of voting rights and school desegregation, produced a number of leading figures in the civil rights movement, and even elected the nation's first black mayor. A look back at the postwar period explores how underlying race and class tensions were resolved as Tuskegee became a symbol of how African Americans could be assimilated into the cultural mainstream through economic and educational progress.