WashingtonPost.com: Chat with Jonathan Coleman Online

Background reading:

A recent Post editorial citing Gallup Poll results on race relations

Excerpts from President Clinton's June speech on race relations

The Post's review of Coleman's earlier book "Exit the Rainmaker"

A 1993 Post article for another twist in the "Rainmaker" story

Go to Chapter One

Talk With Jonathan Coleman Online

Jonathan Coleman, author of the recently-published book "Long Way to Go: Black and White in America," joined us on Tues., October 7 for a live online chat, the transcript of which you can read online.

Jonathan Coleman has been writing award-winning books since 1985 when his bestseller, "At Mother's Request," was published. In 1989 Coleman wrote "Exit the Rainmaker," about the highly-publicized disappearance of Jay Carsey, the former president of Charles County (Md.) Community College, who abruptly left his wife and job to later resurface in West Texas.

Coleman admits to being "obsessed with human behavior," an obsession reflected in his latest book, "Long Way to Go." In the book's prologue Coleman writes:

Race is a subject about which there are points of agreement, and about which there is no agreement; a subject that is either spoken of reluctantly, or not spoken of at all. Race is used, by all of us, in the most manipulative ways, is often force-fit and reduced to something it isn't, to something that gives us a sense of comfort, a false one. Many of us thought -- needed to feel -- the whole business was "settled." But it's not, never has been. Laws have only taken us so far.

"Long Way to Go" is the culmination of seven years of research and reporting on race relations in Milwaukee, Wis. -- what Coleman calls "the heartland of the Heartland," and one of the most segregated cities in America. Coleman found the inspiration for his book in a trip to Montgomery, Ala. in 1989, to cover the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial there. He decided to follow the story of modern-day race relations to the Midwest, where the history of the civil rights movement is different than that of the South -- the one we've become most familiar with as a nation.

In addition to being an author, Coleman has worked as a journalist for CBS News and as a senior editor in book publishing. He lives in Charlottesville, where he taught writing at the University of Virginia from 1986 to 1993.

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