In this FRONTLINE report, correspondent Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard scholar, explores the gaping chasm between the upper and lower classes of black America and probes why it has happened: "How have we reached this point where we have both the largest black middle class and the largest black underclass in our history?"

His personal essay draws a picture of growing black success along with deepening black despair and argues that black upper classes now have more in common with their white colleagues and peers than with those they have left behind in the inner cities.

Reviewing the thirty years that have passed since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Gates shows that while many blacks reaped the reward of the civil rights movement and affirmative action and gained middle-class status, just as many were left behind in an expanding underclass of poverty.