https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEutjyMB450 Some people read about history; poet Kevin Young actually saw an important part of history each week, when he went to his family's church in Topeka, Kan. The former pastor of St. Mark's African Methodist Episcopal Church was the Rev. Oliver Brown, of Brown v Board of Education fame. Rev. Brown was before Young's time, but he was still a felt presence. "His picture was there in the antechamber," Young remembers. "And if you were late—I'm not saying I was ever late," he deadpans, "you got to wait there for a little while until it was time to come in and take your pew." And while Young missed Rev. Brown's tenure, he was around to hear Linda Brown Thompson, the little girl on whose behalf her father brought suit to desegregate the whites-only school near her home, play the piano. Young's new book, Brown , is colored by memories like that, from his family and childhood, United States history and black culture. A color, a people, a history "I was
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