Andrea Pinkney: Hi. This is Andrea Davis Pinkney, and I'm the author of Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America. I'm going to tell you a little bit about why I came to write this book, and I'm also going to read you an excerpt.

Now, how did Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America begin? It actually started as a gift to my son, who at the time was in the sixth grade. He once commented that for school he has to read a lot of books about real people in history and he was really sick of books that were boring, in his mind. He said, "You know, mom. You are an author of non fiction. Could you please write a book about African American historical heroes that is fun to read and that will be interesting for me?" I thought, "You know what, that's a great idea."

I had to do a lot of research to write Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America. Books in the library and a lot of internet research. Now the other thing that's very important is primary research, so I also spent a lot of time interviewing people who knew these men, and that really helped bring the stories alive and make them very colorful.

In the book Hand in Hand, each of the profiles begins with a poem. Now, here is the opening poem for the section on baseball player, Jackie Robinson.

His hands crossed the color line. When he heard the call, "Play ball," he reached to the other side where he raced round the Dodgers' all white diamond. Stirred up second base, sent dirt's dust flying while he slid to the plate, brought baseball's new inning, bat held high, turning the other cheek, swinging rightie, black pride slugger number forty-two stealing home. Make no mistake. "Safe."