American television and movies, it is said, reflect our society's mores and fears.

During the 1940s and '50s, at the height of the Cold War and postwar Red Scare, science fiction movies such as "Destination Moon," about beating the Russians to the moon (1950); "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which focused on Cold War politics (1951); and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," (1956) about communist infiltration into this country, dominated the big screen.

For the past decade or so, apocalyptic movies have prevailed.

Since the year 2000, movies such as "Babylon A.D.," "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan," "I Am Legend," World War Z" and especially "Left Behind" and the "Terminator" series have taken a look at the end of the world as we know it.

Despite the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, the irrational and prejudicial beliefs of individuals are harder, if not impossible, to change.

One "Star Trek" television episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," broadcast in January 1969, five years after the Civil Rights Act went into effect, remains imprinted on my psyche to this day.

Frank Gorshin, as Bele, and Lou Antonia, as Lokai, play refugees, sworn enemies, from the planet Cheron.

Each man has a duo-chromatic face, divided down the middle – one side is black, the other is white.

Bele meets with Starship Enterprise Capt. James Kirk and First Officer Spock and states his black and white coloration is racially superior to Lokai's.

"I am black on the right side ... Lokai is white on the right side," Bele says to Kirk. "All of his people are white on the right side."

This "Star Trek" episode is a prime example of television mirroring the illogical convictions remaining in American society of racial superiority, despite the recent laws passed to the contrary.

Kirk rightly refused to acknowledge any validity of Bele's rants.

Recently, while flipping through the TV channels, I came across an episode of "Daniel Boone," titled "Mamma Cooper."

The show was originally released Feb. 5, 1970.

Set in the 1770s-80s in Kentucky, the series was broadcast September 1964 to September 1970, the height of the Civil Rights era.

Former NFL great Rosey Grier played Gabe Cooper, a former slave and friend to Boone.

World-famous blues, jazz and gospel singer Ethel Waters played his mother, from whom he had been long separated due to slavery.

Cooper finds his mother gravely ill on a plantation and asks Boone's help to find a physician.

The show's Dr. Ramsey performs a cursory exam and states matter of factly the elderly woman is going to die.

Mamma Cooper then asks for a pastor.

Boone goes to town and asks Preacher Potter to see the dying woman.

Potter states if he were to minister to a "negro," his congregation would stop coming to church, but he does give Boone a Bible.

The June 17 slaughter of South Carolina state Senator, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, and eight other Americans of African heritage in Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston was the act of one deranged man.

Just as Boone, a Quaker from the 1770s, and Capt. Kirk, from the year 2268, individually recognized the inequities in their societies, so must we all in the year 2015.

Deranged individuals may commit crimes beyond reason, but it will be individuals of reason who realize the absurdity of prejudice.

Deb Palmieri

editor

Parkland Press

Northwestern Press