In 2002, the late civil rights champion Roger Wilkins gave one of the most memorable talks ever given at the Writers’ Conference.

Roger’s great grandfather was a slave. Two generations later, Roger’s uncle, Roy Wilkins, became the legendary leader of the NAACP for over two decades. Three generations removed from the Mississippi slave fields, Roger Wilkins played pivotal roles in the civil rights advancements of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and later, as author, columnist, and professor, became a powerful voice of advocacy and hope for Black people in America.

In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and other black Americans, and in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, the words of Roger Wilkins, who died in 2017 at the age of 85, have never sounded more relevant, or vital, to the conversation about what kind of great nation America was meant to be, and must still become.

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