Derrick Bell

Once upon a time there was a black law professor at Harvard who taught his students an unforgettable lesson. Angered that the elite school hadn't hired a woman of color as a full-time teacher, he vowed to renounce his $125,000 salary and take a leave of absence until the Ivy League institution changed its ways. One year passed, then two, and still the school hadn't budged. When the outspoken professor sought a third year of leave, officials invoked a university rule and terminated him.

America changed on May 17, 1954. On that day, 50 years ago, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. As a legal matter, the decision declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional and disavowed the doctrine permitting "separate but equal" treatment of blacks and whites.

FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL: The Permanence of Racism by Derrick Bell (Basic: $20; 222 pp.). The first book by African-American law professor Derrick Bell, "And We Are Not Saved" (1987) was as melancholy as the Biblical passage from which it took its name. "The harvest is past," lamented Jeremiah, "the Summer is ended, and we are not saved." "Faces at the Bottom of the Well," in contrast, is as angry as the L.A. riots it follows.

Intended as a work of edification, Derrick Bell's "Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth" led this reader into temptation -- the temptation to be harshly judgmental. Though an evangelical proponent of the gospel of self-fulfillment, Bell is a moralist just the same. As moralists go, however, I will take mine with a larger measure of self-examination.

For all his public anger, Derrick Bell is surprisingly genial and soft-spoken in private. On a rainy Sunday, he welcomes a visitor to his Greenwich Village home, pours two cups of coffee and seems miles away from the wars of Harvard. Yet to spend even a few hours with Bell is to encounter a man deeply troubled--not only by his own story, but by the barriers facing his people.

Do we need yet another book on Civil Rights in the United States? But this is not just another civil rights book. Consider "Divining a Nation's Salvation," the third of its three parts. In this part, in the midst of a hypothetical convention of concerned black people from all over the country, a cure for the rampaging crime wave in their midst is suddenly discovered: "And then the Black Crime Cure was discovered.

Intended as a work of edification, Derrick Bell's "Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth" led this reader into temptation -- the temptation to be harshly judgmental. Though an evangelical proponent of the gospel of self-fulfillment, Bell is a moralist just the same. As moralists go, however, I will take mine with a larger measure of self-examination.

America changed on May 17, 1954. On that day, 50 years ago, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. As a legal matter, the decision declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional and disavowed the doctrine permitting "separate but equal" treatment of blacks and whites.

We are writing to express our dismay at the treatment accorded "Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism" by Derrick Bell (Aug. 23). It is not that Alex Raksin's comments in his "In Brief" review were unjust or uninformed. Rather, we could not help but be disturbed by the fact that you obviously felt that Bell's book did not merit a full-scale review, while Shelby Steele's "The Content of Our Character" did--on Page 1, no less (Sept. 30, 1990). The difference in your treatment of these two books is all the more striking given that both books focus on the complex nature of race relations in the U.S. and that you found both important enough to excerpt in your Opinion section.

For all his public anger, Derrick Bell is surprisingly genial and soft-spoken in private. On a rainy Sunday, he welcomes a visitor to his Greenwich Village home, pours two cups of coffee and seems miles away from the wars of Harvard. Yet to spend even a few hours with Bell is to encounter a man deeply troubled--not only by his own story, but by the barriers facing his people.

Once upon a time there was a black law professor at Harvard who taught his students an unforgettable lesson. Angered that the elite school hadn't hired a woman of color as a full-time teacher, he vowed to renounce his $125,000 salary and take a leave of absence until the Ivy League institution changed its ways. One year passed, then two, and still the school hadn't budged. When the outspoken professor sought a third year of leave, officials invoked a university rule and terminated him.

FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL: The Permanence of Racism by Derrick Bell (Basic: $20; 222 pp.). The first book by African-American law professor Derrick Bell, "And We Are Not Saved" (1987) was as melancholy as the Biblical passage from which it took its name. "The harvest is past," lamented Jeremiah, "the Summer is ended, and we are not saved." "Faces at the Bottom of the Well," in contrast, is as angry as the L.A. riots it follows.

Do we need yet another book on Civil Rights in the United States? But this is not just another civil rights book. Consider "Divining a Nation's Salvation," the third of its three parts. In this part, in the midst of a hypothetical convention of concerned black people from all over the country, a cure for the rampaging crime wave in their midst is suddenly discovered: "And then the Black Crime Cure was discovered.

Four books by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that have been long out of print will be published again under a deal with Beacon Press brokered by King's youngest son. Beacon, a department of the Unitarian Universalist Assn., publishes books on social justice, human rights and racial equality. Among the authors it has published are James Baldwin, Derrick Bell, Cornel West, Howard Thurman, Marian Wright Edelman and Roger Wilkins. On Jan. 18, 2010 -- the federal holiday observing what would have been King's 80th birthday -- the Boston-based publisher will release new editions of "Stride Toward Freedom," first published in 1958, King's memoir of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and 1956; "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

In the Washington Post newsroom, there's a 24-hour sign-up list--no one is allowed to keep the book for more than one day--for the galley proof of Jill Nelson's new memoir, "Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience." The reason could be a passionate interest by the Post's editorial staff in the story of a single, black mother who makes it as a big-time journalist.