Man who inspired Ron Suskind book to speak at WFU

By Rachel Cook
336.758.5237
November 20, 2002

Cedric Jennings, the inspiration for a book by Ron Suskind, will speak in Wake Forest University’s Pugh Auditorium Nov. 21 at 8 p.m.

As part of a class assignment, a group of students read Suskind’s book “A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League,” and were inspired to invite Jennings to Wake Forest.

The book chronicles Jennings’ struggles to excel academically during his last year at an inner-city high school in Washington, D.C., and his first year at Brown University. Suskind first wrote about Jennings in a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for the Wall Street Journal. He later turned the articles into a book.

Jennings now has a master’s degree in education from Harvard University and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in social work at the University of Michigan.

The talk is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Wake Forest Office of Multicultural Affairs, Office of the Dean, student union, graduate program in education, NIA House, Student Government Association, Pi Sigma Alpha chapter, Black Student Alliance and the departments of American ethnic studies, education, political science, religion, journalism and sociology. For more information, call 336-758-5341.

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