Research Catalog

Title

This African-American life / Hugh B. Price.

Author

Price, Hugh B.

Publication

Winston-Salem, North Carolina : John F. Blair, Publisher, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 274 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• "People who believe a problem can be solved tend to get busy solving it," William Raspberry wrote in the Washington Post in July 1994. "Hugh B. Price is a believer." This comment on Price's inaugural keynote address as head of the National Urban League proved prescient. During his tenure as president and CEO from 1994 to 2003, Price conceived and launched its Campaign for African-American Achievement, spearheaded pressure on the federal government to combat police brutality and racial profiling, vigorously defended affirmative action, and helped repair frayed relations between the black and Jewish communities. Yet his role with the League was just one among many for this impressive man.^
• In This African-American Life, Price traces his forbears, among them Nero Hawley, who fought at Valley Forge under George Washington; George and Rebecca Latimer, who escaped slavery by stowing away on a boat and traveling north as master and slave; and Lewis Latimer, who worked with Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison and played a pivotal role in perfecting the light bulb. Price writes about his childhood in a segregated neighborhood near Howard University in Washington, his love of baseball, and his student days in a newly integrated high school and then at Amherst and Yale Law School.^
• He covers his varied and highly successful careers, from his early days as a legal services lawyer and director of the Black Coalition in New Haven, Connecticut, to his time as an editorial writer at the New York Times, as senior vice president in charge of national production at America's largest public television station, as a vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation, and as a faculty member of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. It's easy to sound radical, syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne wrote of Price. By contrast, ideas built on cool reason and the possibility of action often sound moderate. But they can be genuinely radical in their analysis of what's wrong and of what needs to be done.

Subjects

• Civil rights workers
• Biographies
• United States
• National Urban League
• Price, Hugh B
• National Urban League Biography
• Civil rights workers > United States > Biography
• African American lawyers > Biography
• African American intellectuals > Biography
• African American civil rights workers > Biography

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The village that raised me -- An uncommon man with resilient roots -- An Energizer bunny with fascinating origins -- The national pastime, all the time -- One giant leap for integration -- Laboratory in democracy -- The center of my universe -- Training for the law and for life -- Moving toward the mainstream -- The New York Times knocks -- Let's go to the videotape -- Other people's money -- The military and me -- There at the creation -- A dream deferred comes true -- Taking the reins in contentious times -- My speech makes a splash -- Spreading the gospel of achievement -- The criminal injustice system -- Affirmative action and other fights -- Fringe benefits -- Reflections on leadership -- Denouement of an adventuresome career.

ISBN

• 9780895876911
• 0895876914

LCCN

^^2017004144

OCLC

• 974567606
• SCSB-11226924

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library