From the Publisher:
People I've talked to outside of publishing think that it's a glamorous job, and we get the chance to meet with many celebrities, prominent figures, and literary lights. That's not always the case, but I was fortunate enough to be involved in the production of Kweisi Mfume's NO FREE RIDE. Before doing the book, I hadn't heard much about Mr. Mfume. After all, he was a congressman from Maryland, and the only thing I knew about Maryland was that it was the home of crabcakes and the Baltimore Orioles.
As it turns out, Mr. Mfume, besides being a Congressman and eventually being selected to head the NAACP as its Chief Executive Officer, is a huge Orioles fan. In fact, baseball plays a particularly large part in his recollections of his youth. His youth league coach, Mr. Smitty, is a wonderfully drawn character and the kind of man that many young people need in their life--tough, demanding, and generous of time and spirit.
As work on the book progressed, I got the opportunity to speak to Mr. Mfume on several occasions. Invariably our conversations drifted toward the Oriole's progress toward the playoffs and an eventual showdown with the dreaded Yankees. I suppose that in a lot of ways, the Yankees have represented for generations of baseball fans the same things that Mr. Mfume has battled against in his long career--wealth and privilege. In these jaded times, some may dismiss his rise from a hardscrabble youth to the halls of Congress and beyond as just another one of those inspirational stories.
But the radical transformation Mr. Mfume underwent, his incredible devotion to his mother, and his return to faith in himself and the vision his mother had of his future can't be easily dismissed nor easily explained. Just as we sometimes wonder how someone from a privileged background can go so wrong, we should celebrate those times when a man swims against the tide of his life circumstances and emerges triumphant.
Isn't that the kind of story we love to hear about a baseball game? At the risk of being too trite, Mr. Mfume was down to his last strike, and he came through in the clutch. His is a great story and one we should all be glad to hear again and again.
From the Back Cover:
The story of Kweisi Mfume is a classic American saga. Uprooted from the rural tranquility of Turners Station and thrust upon the gritty streets of West Baltimore, the child born Frizzell Gray seemed fated to become another statistic of black urban pathology. In a household shattered by domestic violence and emotional strife, Frizzell had only the strong arms of his loving mother to protect him and his three younger sisters. But when he was sixteen years old, his cancer-stricken mother died in his arms, and his world crumbled. To survive, he turned to the streets. He dropped out of school, worked odd jobs, and hustled for money. But fate stepped in. In a life-altering moment of revelation, Frizzell saw where he was headed and realized that everything about the old Frizzell Gray would have to die. As he embarked on the journey to transform himself, he affirmed his spiritual rebirth and took the Ghanaian name Kweisi Mfume, "Conquering Son of Kings". Today, a quarter-century later, Kweisi Mfume is among the most respected and influential leaders in the United States. Mfume's journey into the nation's power elite was as rocky as it was colorful: from night GED courses to college student activism to militant radio disc jockey, where his first philosophical battles were fought against James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul". Mfume's emergence as a political figure broke every rule - he parlayed his burgeoning fame as a talk-radio provocateur to win a seat as a maverick member of the Baltimore City Council. He then took on the local political machine to represent a Congressional district that encompasses both the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich. As the newly appointed head of theNAACP, Mfume reminds us that everything has a price, and that as citizens of democracy, none of us can expect a free ride. His inspirational story serves as a reminder to all Americans, black and white, that the enduring values of hard work, loyalty, and the steadfast commitment to a vision can ignite both personal and political change.
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