Never Forget Our People Were Always Free

“One of the nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders” (Washington Post), a New York Times best-selling 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:

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.