by Julius Lester
On what would have been his 82nd birthday, we celebrate a distinguished Amherst author, civil rights activist, professor, musician, and photographer. Julius Lester wrote 31 award-winning children’s books as well as nonfiction and fiction for adults. The Julius Lester Collection at the Jones Library Special Collections contains his archives and personal papers. In Do Lord Remember Me (1984), a dying minister recalls his boyhood and the life of his African American people in their churches throughout the South at the beginning of the 20th century. Kirkus praised it as a “thoughtful, artful treatment of an important theme — the reclamation of black generations, styles of survival — with a delicately touching story and an immensely attractive character in Reverend Smith.”
See the Jones Library Antiracism Book List for recommended titles for all ages