A Word on Words

Introduction: The Breadth, Depth, and Passion of John Seigenthaler, by Frye Gaillard

Part I: Civil Rights
Arna Bontemps, Free at Last: The Life of Frederick Douglass and Great Slave Narratives
John Egerton, Speak Now against The Day
John Lewis, Walking with The Wind
David Halberstam, The Children
Frye Gaillard, Cradle of Freedom

Part II: Literature
Jesse Hill Ford, The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones
Pat Conroy, The Death of Santini
Ann Patchett, The Patron Saint of Liars
Dori Sanders, Clover
Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone
Nikki Giovanni, Chasing Utopia

Part III: Music
Marshall Chapman, Goodbye Little Rock and Roller
Marty Stuart, Country Music: The Masters
Rodney Crowell, Chinaberry Sidewalks
Waylon Jennings, Waylon: An Autobiography
Kinky Friedman, The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover

Part IV: Sports
Charles Fountain, Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice
William Marshall, Baseball’s Pivotal Era, 1945–1951
William Price Fox, Satchel Paige’s America
Pat Toomay, On Any Given Sunday

Part V: The Presidency
Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
David Maraniss, Barack Obama: The Story
John Seigenthaler Sr., James K. Polk

Epilogue, by Andrew Maraniss
Books Featured in This Volume

(From the Introduction to Part I: Civil Rights)

John Seigenthaler was a young reporter in Nashville when the civil rights movement began in that city. Partly because of that, and partly because of his experience with the movement as a member of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department, Black struggles for equality became a recurring theme on A Word on Words.

These five interviews are grouped chronologically according to the subjects they cover. We begin with Arna Bontemps, a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance and one of the most prolific African American scholars of the twentieth century. At the time of his interview with Seigenthaler, Bontemps was head librarian at Fisk University and had released two books that year: Free at Last: The Life of Frederick Douglass and Great Slave Narratives.

John Egerton, a renowned journalist/historian living in Nashville, won the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for his book Speak Now against the Day, telling the story of a generation of Southerners who worked for racial progress before the beginning of the civil rights movement. As Egerton explains, these were men and women, Black and white, who looked at the racial order in the South and said, “This won’t work.”

One of Seigenthaler’s most iconic guests on A Word on Words was John Lewis, who emerged from his leadership role in the civil rights struggle to become one of the most beloved members of the US Congress. He talks about his memoir, Walking with the Wind, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award.