Black Leaders on Leadership Conversations with Julian Bond
By Phyllis Leffler
4 December $32 | £17 | Paperback $105 | £66 | Hardcover
“Leffler and Bond have put together a book of vital importance to the critical work of developing and fostering black leadership in America—it also happens to be a remarkably comprehensive account of the greatest movement for justice in American history. Like the Federal Writers' Project to compile slave narratives, Black Leaders on Leadership provides first-hand accounts of the valiant struggles of some of the most important activists America has ever produced. It should be required reading in the curriculum of every high school in America.” - Wade Henderson, President & CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The Leadership Conference Education Fund
The American civil rights movement of the 21st century produced some of the nation’s most influential black activists and leaders, many of whom are still working for positive social change today. In Black Leaders on Leadership, activist and politician Julian Bond and historian Phyllis Leffler use a rich portfolio of these leaders’ personal histories to weave an account of black leadership in America, aiming to inspire the next generation of leaders in the African American community.
Drawing on a wealth of oral interviews collected by Bond and Leffler, Black Leaders on Black Leadership uses the lives of prominent African Americans from all sectors of society to trace the contours of black leadership in America. Included here are fascinating accounts from a wide variety of figures such as John Lewis, Clarence Thomas, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Vernon Jordan, Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka, and many more.
Stories of identity are foregrounded here – stories about the self, about group and community, about value and meaning. These individual and collective memories form a genealogy of social and cultural identity, demonstrating how leadership emerges from historical struggle rooted in the promise of a brighter future, and providing valuable insights into the intractable disparities of race in America.
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Notes to editors:
About the Authors Phyllis Leffler is the Director of the Institute for Public History and Professor at the University of Virginia. She is the co-author of Public and Academic History: A Philosophy and Paradigm (1991) and
Press contact: Amy Bourke [email protected] +44(0)207 843 4603
Public History Readings (1990) and has published award-winning articles in The Public Historian and the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. She is the co-director of the Explorations in Black Leadership project at UVA (www.blackleadership.virginia.edu).
Julian Bond is a prominent African American activist, politician, and teacher who served from 1998 to 2010 as the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People and the co-director of the Explorations in Black Leadership project at UVA. He was also the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and served a combined twenty terms in both houses of the Georgia Legislature. Among his books are Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table: A Documentary History of the Civil Rights Movement (1995) and Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem, 100 Years, 100 Voices (2000).
Book Information Black Leaders on Leadership: Conversations with Julian Bond Paperback | $32 | £17 | 9781137342508 Hardback | $105 | £66 | 9781137342492 Published: 4 December
Find the book on Palgrave.com here
Press contact: Amy Bourke [email protected] +44(0)207 843 4603