By February of 1960, Terry Sanford had been working for the better part of a decade to win the governorship of North Carolina, a job he had dreamt of most of his adult life. But when four young black men sat down at a Woolworth counter in the city of Greensboro in his home state and demanded to be served, their actions put him in the most excruciating dilemma. To support them would be to commit political suicide; to condemn them would be to violate his most basic principles; to remain silent was impossible. TERRY SANFORD AND THE NEW SOUTH is the story of a progressive Southern governor and his bare-knuckle politics during segregation's reign. The program charts the emergence of this back-slapping, cigar-smoking white politician as he pushed his vision for a new South and became a forceful agent of racial change. The program features interviews with vice presidential candidate John Edwards, former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt, civil rights leader Vernon Jordan and wife Margaret Rose Sanford.

Monday, April 2, 2007, 10:00-11:00 p.m. ET