The O.J. Simpson murder trial exposed many painful truths. None hit harder than the idea that white and black people often look at the same facts and see different realities.

Today, 20 years after the case divided the nation, few opinions have changed. Despite two decades’ worth of increasing racial acceptance, the saga still reflects deep-rooted obstacles to a truly united America.

Most people still believe that the black football legend killed his white ex-wife and her friend, polls show. But for many African-Americans, his likely guilt remains overwhelmed by a potent mix: the racism of the lead detective and the history of black mistreatment by the justice system.

For these people, Simpson’s acquittal is a powerful rebuke to what they see as America’s racial crimes. Others simply see a murderer who played the race card to get away with it. Across the board, emotions remain vivid.

“We were consumed with it,” recalls Carlos Carter, who at the time was one of the few black people working in the trust department of a Pittsburgh bank. “It represented something bigger than the case, the battle between good and evil, the battle between the white man and the black man. It was at that level.”

It was at a different level for Shannon Spicker, a white woman working her way through college in Ohio at the time.

“Most of us didn’t understand why it was racially charged,” she says. “We didn’t understand how people could defend him ... We knew he was guilty, but they defended him because he was black. It was weird.”

On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found knifed to death outside her Los Angeles condo. Suspicion quickly focused on Simpson, who had beaten Nicole in the past and had no alibi.

Several factors heightened and complicated the drama:

Simpson had a mixed-race marriage in a nation that had historically punished black men who dared to explore interracial sex. He was the target of a Los Angeles Police Department that had a reputation for racism and corruption.

But Simpson also was a wealthy Hollywood actor and ad pitchman with little connection to the black community, a man who divorced his black wife for a young blonde and traveled in Los Angeles’ most privileged white circles. His money and fame placed him far from the poor, black men languishing in the criminal justice system.