Looking Back to Move Forward: Reconciling the Past - Liberating the Future

Kelvin DeMarcus Allen has crafted a luminous narrative that speaks volumes to those of us who came of age during and immediately after the civil rights movement. Kelvin grew up as the bastard child the beleaguered fruit of a poor single mother and a father who treated him as if he were invisible. One of seven children the struggling family lived in a rundown wood-frame house with plumbing so bad the family often had to relieve themselves in a hole in the backyard. W.E.B. Dubois The Souls Of Black Folk and Gordon Parks The Learning Tree come to mind while reading Kelvins slim elegant volume. Some may think the comparison is a stretch - Dubois. The agitator-prophet and Parks the quintessential Renaissance man are two of Americas greatest heroes - perhaps Kelvins greatest work is yet to come. Kelvin DeMarcus Allen is a graduate of North Carolina Central University in Durham N.C. and holds a Master of Arts degree in Leadership & Liberal Studies from Duquesne University.