Lerone Bennett Jr. was a journalist and social historian who wrote about race relations in the United States. One of his books, Before the Mayflower, covers the history of Black America from 1619 to 1962, and he later wrote Forced into Glory, a book about Abraham Lincoln. Born in 1928 and raised in Mississippi, Bennett worked at the Atlanta Daily World and JET before being associated with Ebony for more than 50 years, long as its executive editor. He died in 2018.
