Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing

by Benjamin Todd Jealous

Overview

“One of the nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders” (Washington Post), a New York Times bestselling author, community organizer, investigative journalist, Ivy League professor, and former head of the NAACP, Ben Jealous draws from a life lived on America’s racial fault line to deliver a series of gripping and lively parables that call on each of us to reconcile, heal, and work fearlessly to make America one nation.

Never Forget Our People Were Always Free illuminates for each of us how the path to healing America’s broken heart starts with each of us having the courage to heal our own.The son of parents who had to leave Maryland because their cross-racial marriage was illegal, Ben Jealous’ lively, courageous and empathetic storytelling calls on every American to look past deeply-cut divisions and recognize we are all in the same boat now. Along the way Jealous grapples with hidden American mysteries, including:

• Why do white men die from suicide more often than black men die from murder?
• How did racial profiling kill an American president?
• What happens when a Ku Klux Klansman wrestles with what Jesus actually said? 
• How did Dave Chappelle know the DC Snipers were Black? 
• Why shouldn't the civil rights movement give up on rednecks?
• When is what we have collectively forgotten about race more important than what we actually know?
• What do the most indecipherable things our elders say tell us about ourselves?

 Told as a series of parables, Never Forget Our People Were Always Free features intimate glimpses of political, and faith leaders as different as Jack Kemp, Stacey Abrams, and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu and heroes as unlikely as a retired constable, a female pirate from Madagascar, a long lost Irishman, a death row inmate, and a man with a confederate flag over his heart.

More than anything, Never Forget Our People Were Always Free offers readers hope America’s oldest wounds can heal and her oldest divisions be overcome.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062961761
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

“One of the nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders” (Washington Post), former national NAACP President Ben Jealous grew up the son of a white father who descends from seven soldiers in the American Revolution and a black mother whose American bloodline flows with that of Thomas Jefferson’s grandmother.

Ben Jealous is President of People For the American Way, Professor of the Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, and the New York Times bestselling author of Reach: 40 Black Men Speak on Living, Leading, and Succeeding. He is also a successful tech investor who has helped grow more than two dozen startups built to have a positive social impact.

Formerly an investigative reporter at Mississippi’s frequently-firebombed Jackson Advocate newspaper, and a popular speaker on college campuses and at community and business leadership events, Jealous is known both for his raucously insightful storytelling and resilient optimism passed down by a grandmother whose own grandfather had been born into slavery and went on to serve as a statesman in the Virginia legislature.

In 2013, the Baltimore Sun named Jealous Marylander of the Year for his work helping lead efforts that passed marriage equality, abolished the death penalty and passed the DREAM Act in that state in a single year. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the proud father of a daughter and son. He lives with his family and their dog Charlie along the Chesapeake Bay.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Hey, Cousin! 1

1 Trouble in the Air 3

2 Who Is My Family? 14

3 History as a Riddle 22

4 Discovering the Roots of Race 26

5 Making It to Twenty-One 33

6 Finding Friends in Mississippi 46

7 The Personal Perils of Peacemaking 59

8 Making the Wounded Whole 68

9 A Pandemic Ignored 73

10 Beyond Black and White 90

11 A Forgotten History of Race 105

12 Politics and Betrayal in Black and White 113

13 Serial (Killer) Mistakes 128

14 One in the White House, One Million or Two in the Big House 142

15 The NAACP in the Whitest State in the Union 157

16 Courage and Solidarity 164

17 The First State South of the Mason-Dixon 175

18 A Race War Begins and Ends 181

19 An American Parable 190

20 A Holler from the Hollers 202

21 Rising Up Together 218

A Final Note: An Optimist's Greatest Gift 224

Acknowledgments 231

Notes 239

Editorial Reviews

Ben Jealous appeals to our ‘better angels’ through storytelling that is riotously funny, deeply moving, and profoundly insightful. He is utterly brilliant, and his work to bridge our differences has never been more important.” — Henry Louis Gates Jr.

“Never Forget Our People Were Always Free offers a timely meditation on the challenges we must continue to confront, and the progress made, as we pursue our common humanity.” — Stacey Abrams

“Never Forget is powerful and poignant, but it is also proudly optimistic in many ways.” — Walter Isaacson

“Never Forget is rooted in the powerful hope that we can solve our country’s most Difficult problems by working together.” — Van Jones

“Never Forget is a must-read manifesto of what’s possible when we center love, faith, and aspiration in our common cause.” — April Ryan, Author of Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem

“Through a series of poignant vignettes and conversations with often extraordinary people, Ben Jealous taps into universal truths about the Black experience and shows us how we heal and grow.” — Elie Mystal, author of Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution

“Ben Jealous uses a warm and captivating writing style to show us that the original state of the human being is freedom.” — Robert F. McDonnell, former governor of Virginia

“Few individuals can tell a story as authentically and entertainingly as Ben Jealous.” — Virginia Kase Solomón, CEO of League of Women Voters

From the Publisher

2022-10-21
How a series of representative stories can teach us about political collaboration and racial reconciliation.

Jealous, a prominent civil rights leader and former head of the NAACP, delivers a series of “parables” meant to illustrate plausible strategies for overcoming the most formidable obstacles to social justice in America. The author reflects on his own experiences with discrimination and his career as an academic and activist, and he considers the history of racism in America and the racialized failures of its criminal justice system. Some of the personal anecdotes are tendentious, and the dialogue attributed to revelatory encounters with allies and enemies is often stilted, but the text comes alive when Jealous examines the paradoxes of American freedom and the potential of specific approaches to eradicating bigotry. The author, who edited the collection Reach: 40 Black Men Speak on Living, Leading, and Succeeding, is particularly perceptive on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the massive human toll of the so-called “war on drugs,” and the warping effect of racist assumptions involved in criminal profiling. Most striking is the discussion of how, over the past half-century, prison systems have siphoned off money formerly devoted to state educational institutions and how politically diverse coalitions have achieved, however haltingly, key reversals of this process. Ultimately, Jealous makes resonant appeals for the importance of prioritizing confrontations with systemic racism and memorably underscores the great promise revealed by past efforts at working cooperatively. In pointing to historical instances of shared resistance to oppressive power structures among enslaved Blacks and indentured White servants, for instance, the author drives home his central, persuasive thesis: “Black and White people can work together to create a fairer, free society.” Ultimately, Jealous seeks a nation “where the very American tradition of denying the humanity of people of a darker hue does not exist.”

A thoughtful, informed set of reflections on America’s past and future struggles for social equity.

Kirkus Reviews