Black Leaders on Leadership ─ Conversations With Julian Bond

Drawing on a wealth of oral interviews collected by activist and politician Julian Bond and historian Phyllis Leffler, Conversations 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.

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. 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 (American Heritage, 1995) and Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem, 100 Years, 100 Voices (Random House, 2000).

Phyllis Leffler is a Professor of History at the University of Virginia, USA. Along with Julian Bond, she is the co-director of the Explorations in Black Leadership project at UVA (www.virginia.edu/publichistory/bl/).