The elders speak

Camille O. Cosby, a producer and educator, and Renee Poussaint, a veteran network journalist and winner of three Emmy Awards, say that the wisdom of our elders is our most valuable resource. In A WEALTH OF WISDOM: LEGENDARY AFRICAN AMERICAN ELDERS SPEAK (Atria, $27.95), Cosby and Poussaint edited collections of stories, experiences and observations of more than 50 African-Americans, ages 70 and over, including Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee, David Dinkins, Dick Gregory, Robert Guillaume and Andrew Young. The collection also includes the late legends Katherine Dunham, Coretta Scott King, Gordon Parks, Ray Charles and Ossie Davis. Accompanied by portraits by photographer Howard L. Bingham, accounts by these legends take readers behind their historic public moments to their underlying personal realities. Cosby and Poussaint collected the stories as part of their work with the National Visionary Leadership Program, an organization they founded to capture and preserve the lessons learned from African-American elders for tomorrow's leaders.

In another interesting work of nonfiction, noted journalist Juan Williams takes a hard look at the stace of Black America 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education opened the way for school desegregation and 40 years since the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. In ENOUGH: THE PHONY LEADERS, DEAD-END MOVEMENTS, AND CULTURE OF FAILURE THAT ARE UNDERMINING BLACK AMERICA--AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT (Crown, $25), Williams says that it is time to acknowledge that the disparity in achievement between African-Americans and the rest of the American population has seeds in the Black community. Williams criticizes what he calls the failure of the post-Civil Rights generation of African-Americans to seize on the gains of that historic movement. He concludes that African-Americans have abandoned the aspects of traditional Black culture that allowed them to survive for hundreds of years--a society that valued education, creativity, community and decisive action. He says that by embracing the traditional cultural values that have sustained Blacks for centuries, African-Americans can reclaim the traditional culture that has been allowed to erode over the past few decades. Williams is a political and social commentator for National Public Radio and the Fox News Channel.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Johnson Publishing Co.
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