Washington Post story re: my book and D.C. Mayor Fenty

Many of you read the Washington Post article last week about my book, The Senator and the Socialite, and its significance for D.C.'s new Mayor, Adrian Fenty. Post op-ed columnist Colbert I. King quotes from my book and eloquently argues that Mayor Fenty should consider one of the the important lessons that I report: It was a lesson that was experienced by Washington's first black superintendent of schools in the early 1900s. As my book described, the highly celebrated black Washington superintendent Roscoe Bruce lost the support of influential black Washingtonians--and eventually his job in 1921--when he decided that the opinions of black residents, educators and intellectual leaders did not matter. Roscoe Bruce was not only a phi beta kappa graduate of Harvard's class of 1902, an honors graduate of Phillips Exeter and a friend of Booker T. Washington, but he was also the son of U.S. Senator Blanche Bruce, the first black to serve a full-term in the U.S. Senate. None of these credentials saved him when black Washingtonians discovered that here was a black leader who had turned his back on the very residents who had put him in power.

Washington Post columnist King uses his March 24 article "A History Lesson for Mayor Fenty" to argue that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty should realize that Washington's elite are paying attention to the appointments that he is making and the opinions that he is seeking. Columnist King suggests that Fenty could find himself in the same predicament as the once well-regarded Roscoe Bruce if he is not thoughtful and respectful to the constituents who elected him to the position of Washington, D.C. Mayor.