In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, exploring the ups and downs of class consciousness. We'll look at the Jack and Jill cotillion — for black debutantes, and a poor white Southern woman who takes on The Nation magazine. Also, some live songs of the working stiff.

Lawrence Graham is an attorney and author of "Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class." He tells Jim Fleming about growing up as a member of the Black elite - sailing on his Black friends' yachts, riding their horses, and attending balls and cotillions for Black debutantes. Also, Cuban American novelist Oscar Hijuelos talks with Judith Strasser about the class issues at the heart of his latest novel, "Empress of the Splendid Season."

Actor Jeff Golden performs an excerpt from Howard Zinn's play "Marx in Soho," in which Marx comes back from the dead to clear his name and through a bureaucratic error finds himself in contemporary Soho, New York. Howard Zinn is a historian and the author of "A People's History of the United States." Also, Linda Stout, founder of the Piedmont Peace Project in North Carolina and author of "Bridging the Class Divide and Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing," tells Steve Paulson how she was discriminated against in school and how class divides exist even within the progressive movement.

Bill Malone has written many books on country music and edited the Smithsonian's Collection of Classic Country Music. He talks with Judith Strasser about country music as working class expression and, accompanying himself on guitar, performs several songs.

Distribution dates:

• week of 05/14/2000 - hour 1
• week of 04/11/99 - hour 1