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Ben Jealous: "Never Forget Our People Were Always Free"

Ben Jealous as a child with his grandfather. Photo: provide by Harper Collins
Ben Jealous as a child with his grandfather. Photo: provide by Harper Collins

You may know Ben Jealous as a civil-rights leader -- former president of the NAACP, its youngest president ever when he was named in 2008. You may know him as the Democrat candidate for governor of Maryland in 2018, who failed to unseat incumbent Republican Larry Hogan. Maybe you know that Jealous was born and grew up in California -- in part because his African-American mother and white father left Baltimore after they married; interracial marriage was not legal in Maryland until 1967.

But many of the stories Jealous tells in his new book--including the summers he spent with his maternal grandparents in West Baltimore--are rooted in Maryland. The book is called "Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing." And Ben Jealous joins us to talk about it.

Links: Writers LIVE at the Pratt, 1/14/23.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
Melissa Gerr is a Senior Producer for On the Record. She started in public media at Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn., where she is from, and then worked as a field producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland. She made the jump to audio-lover in Baltimore as a digital media editor at Mid-Atlantic Media and Laureate Education, Inc. and as a field producer for "Out of the Blocks." Her beat is typically the off-beat with an emphasis on science, culture and things that make you say, 'Wait, what?'