Louis E. Lomax opens with a description and examples of “ignorance in high places”: systemic and inculcated racism in the federal government that has negatively impacted foreign and domestic policy. He describes the very high stakes faced by organizers and advocates for civil rights. He discusses numerous contemporary political figures, including Nikita Khrushchev, Malcolm X, Governor George Wallace, President Harry S. Truman, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-Tung, Kemala Nehru, Jomo Kenyatta, Martin Luther King, and Lyndon Johnson. He relates American racism to the Cold War and U.S. imperialism, as well as ongoing decolonization efforts in Africa and elsewhere, and his book, The Reluctant African. Lomax discusses the ongoing impacts of segregation and exclusionary and racist policies, specifically in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and Cleveland, Ohio, as well as more broadly, as it relates to perpetuating existing power structures. Lomax ends by urging the audience to join him “on the picket line.”