""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 havecollectively 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"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

Told in a series of parables, this courageous and empathetic book, drawing from a life lived on America’s racial fault line, illuminates for each of us how the path to healing our nation’s broken heart starts with each of us having the courage to heal our own. 40,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

“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.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Unity across racial lines will save America from its corrosive contemporary politics and widening social divisions, according to this inspiring memoir. Former NAACP national president Jealous (Reach) presents a series of insightful personal anecdotes that touch on a wide range of social issues, including mass incarceration, racial profiling, social isolation, drug addiction, and mental health. Highlights include a trip to visit his godbrother, comedian Dave Chappelle, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, at the turn of the millennium; working with California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to tackle mass incarceration as part of a Republican-Democratic coalition; forging an unlikely friendship in rural Mississippi with an elderly white man who helped stop the state from turning a historically Black college into a prison; and listening with Georgia politician Stacey Abrams to heart-wrenching testimony from the son of a former Klansman. Elsewhere, Jealous relates the story of a white inmate who risked his life to expose corruption in a Mississippi prison and get justice for a murdered African American inmate, details the links between skyrocketing university tuitions and mass incarceration, and notes that colonial America's first rebellions pitted white indentured servants together with enslaved Africans against "the ruling elite." Fluidly interweaving autobiography, politics, and history, this is a rousing song of hope. (Dec.)