Listed among Ebony's ""100 Most Influential Blacks in America,"" JUNIUS W. WILLIAMS is a prominent attorney, educator, and advocate who is responsible for developing 2,000 housing units and many community centers in Newark, New Jersey. A graduate of Amherst and Yale, he was elected the youngest President of the National Bar Association in 1978 and is currently Director of the Abbott Leadership Institute at Rutgers University.
Junius Williams's memoir provoked a full range of emotions locked in my private vault of memories. His personal journey should be required reading for people who care about their communities and have either a sense of hopelessness or a burning desire to bring about positive change where they live. --Dennis W. Archer, mayor of Detroit (1994-2001) and president of the National Bar Association (1983-1984) and the American Bar Association (2003-2004) This absolutely riveting story resonates well beyond the emblematic city of Newark, New Jersey. An activist combining ivy-league sophistication and street smarts, Junius Williams helped make the urban North's civil rights revolution. Although his people's power inevitably ran up against entrenched institutional power, black as well as white, Williams still inspires and instructs a new generation for whom this should be recommended reading. --Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University, and author of The History of White People Unfinished Agenda is the memoir of a remarkable man's personal journey through the racial, social, and cultural politics of the last half-century. Junius Williams has spent his life as a changemaker, and his story is certain to inspire activists today and for generations to come. --John Schreiber, president and CEO of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center Williams is an example of what one leader can do to inspire change in the city. He's passing his knowledge on to the next generation, to keep the fires of resistance and imagination burning. --John D. Atlas, NJ.com