Black America's popular historian: Lerone Bennett Jr. almost retired after 50 years at Ebony. Now his next five books, like his first 10 works, will have to be written after hours, too.

Lerone Bennett Jr.'s plan was to retire from 50 years of magazine journalism so he could finish writing five books before he reaches age 80. The executive editor of Ebony magazine and author of Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (Johnson Publishing Co., Inc., April 2003), said last August that he would leave when he turned 75 in October. By fall, however, Bennett announced that he was persuaded to unretire.

"Publisher, chairman and founder John H. Johnson, and president and CEO Linda Johnson Rice asked me to reconsider," Bennett told Black Issues Book Review (BIBR). "We're making a lot of transitions [at Ebony/Jet]. The bottom line is I am not retiring now."

Yet Bennett is determined to finish a handful of books. "I have the sense and feeling of a great period of historical and African American scholarship," Bennett explained.

For example, in September, at the annual convention of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), a plenary session in Milwaukee was devoted to the historical books Bennett has written in more than four decades--10 thus far--as well as other aspects of his life.

Ida E. Jones, the senior manuscript librarian with Moorland Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and a member of ASALH, said, "Bennett's effort to uncover history was in line with this year's black history theme, 'The Souls of Black Folk: A Centennial Reflection.'"

"Bennett embodies the spirit of public history, work done by interpreters, archivists and librarians in historical, not classroom settings. He has maintained visibility, integrity to history and accountability to African people."

Says Bennett, "This was extraordinarily exciting. There's so much more to be done. We need an army of young black, and white, historians." Bennett wants to remain in the forefront of these writers transforming the American story.

Bennett's Before The Mayflower was originally published in 1963, the year that the University of Mississippi was desegregated. Since then, Before the Mayflower has been published in seven editions that have been revised and updated. The "New Millennium Edition," published last year, added three new chapters since the last printing in September 1995. Also, for the first time, 32 pages of color photos of modern-day black achievers brighten the text.

Bennett told BIBR about what shaped his relentless drive to analyze and chronicle the African experience in America: "I grew up in Mississippi in 1928, the worst place in the world, bar none, for a black boy or black girl. Somehow, I decided at an early age that I needed to seize the word and master it to understand Mississippi and save my life.

"Before I was ten, I fell in love with the word. To this day, I have this passion. If you can understand the history and interpret, you master and begin to change the history," he says. "I believed the word was one of the few weapons available to save my life and my people's lives."

Second, he continues, "I fell in love with the press. I hung around the two black newspapers in Jackson [Mississippi]--The Jackson Advocate and the Mississippi Enterprise." Bennett was a newsboy and gofer for journalists.

Bennett's full-time job as executive editor of Ebony often demands 10-hour days in the office on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. In order to write many of his books, he says, "I've been able to think about what I want to write and make notes during the day." Bennett also gathers material for his books while traveling to give speeches and to do research.

Journalists, says Bennett, "have a responsibility to do more than chase fires and write about the latest musical trend of the day. The journalist must deal with fundamental historical, social and political issues of their time.

So what are those books that Bennett is eager to write within five years of becoming an octogenarian? "I want to write two books on Lincoln; a collection of my work, including poetry and short stories; a book on the meaning of African American history, and another on the the lens that America uses to see the world.

Last September, in Milwaukee, Bennett received the Carter G. Woodson Lifetime Achievement Award from ASALH, the society Woodson--called "the father of black history"--established in 1915.

"It's been a great honor to have the opportunity to tell the story of African American people for 50 or so years," says Bennett. "Nobody owes me an award, I owe blacks."

40 Years of Scholarship

from Lerone Bennett Jr.

(All titles published by Johnson Pub. Co., some may be out of print.)

* Before the Mayflower: History of Black America (1962, 1964, 1966, 1969, 1982, 1987, 2003), ISBN 0-874-85091-6

* Black Power U.S.A.: The Human Side of Reconstruction, April 1967, ASIN 0-874-85023-1

* The Challenge of Blackness, June 1972, ASIN 0-874-85054-1

* Confrontation: Black and White, (1965) January 1977, ASIN 0-874-85021-5

* Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream, February 2000, ISBN 0-874-85091-6

* Negro Mood, January 1964, ASIN 0-874-85012-6

* Pioneers in Protest September 1968, ISBN 0-874-85026-6

* Shaping of Black America (1975) August 1989, ISBN 0-874-85071-1

* Wade in the Water, (1979) January 2000, ISBN O-874-85078-9 Inc.

* What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King Jr., (1964) June 1992, ISBN 0-874-85027-4

Wayne Dawkins is the author of Black Journalists: The NABJ Story.