According to Bennett, Mays' influence was omnipresent at Morehouse as the college transformed boys into men. Mays, esteemed educator, scholar, clergyman, civic leader, and orator, was president.

After graduating from high school in 1945, Bennett matriculated at Morehouse where Martin Luther King Jr. In Golphin's article, 'A Distinguished Gentleman,' Bennett remembers, 'This was a terrible time with almost total violence against and oppression of black people, and these men tried to act like men, and walk and talk like men at a time when it was dangerous to be a black man.' When Bennett realized that his role models had graduated from Morehouse College, the private liberal arts institution for African American men, he decided to enroll there. Manning, with developing his interest in history her dramatic teaching style made historical figures exciting as she encouraged her students to realize that history is more than names and dates and to become vicariously involved in historical events.īennett was also influenced by several male public school teachers and Jackson State College administrators. Bennett credits his high school history teacher, Mrs. Bennett's first newspaper editorial was published when he was eleven years old, and in high school, he edited his school's newspaper and yearbook. In the same article, Bennett admits that he 'hung around' Jackson's two African American newspapers: The Jackson Advocate and the Mississippi Enterprise. In 'Black America's Popular Historian,' Bennett comments that he fell in love with 'the word' before his tenth birthday and that he realized that it was a weapon that could save his life as well as the lives of other African Americans. The Bennett family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where the future journalist and historian became interested in writing and history while attending the city's public schools.

Bennett, the author of a dozen books and the executive editor of Ebony magazine, is revered as a modern-day griot whose writings have educated scholars and the reading public about the black presence in the United States.īennett was born on Octoin Clarksdale, Mississippi to Lerone Bennett, a chauffeur, and his wife, Alma Reed Bennett, a restaurant cook. has eloquently and steadfastly documented African American life. In a distinguished career that has spanned more than five decades, journalist and historian Lerone Bennett Jr.

Lerone bennett before the mayflower