“Black Leaders and Leadership” is a presentation based on the ten-year oral history project co-directed by Julian Bond and Phyllis Leffler. It relates the views of fifty Black leaders on such topics as family, education, and the inspiration of the Civil Rights movement. The lessons learned are significant and relevant for contemporary America, not least because of their focus on experiences that fuelled Black success.

Phyllis Leffler is the director of the Institute for Public History and professor at the University of Virginia. She is the co-author (with Joseph Brent) of Public History: A Philosophy and Paradigm and Public History Readings. She has published award-winning articles in The Public Historian and The Magazine of Virginia History and Biography, and most recently, “Black families and fostering of leadership” (with Hephzibah Strimic-Pawl) in Ethnicities.