A sociologist and professor of education at Harvard University and the second African American woman in that university's history to become a permanent faculty member, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot has received many prizes for her work, which deals with race, class, American schools, and the education of minorities.

Lawrence-Lightfoot's book I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation about the black middle class, was selected as a Book-of- the-Month Club main choice. Her book Balm in Gilead chronicles her own mother's life. Among other awards, Lawrence-Lightfoot won Harvard University's George Ledlie Prize for her research.

Lawrence-Lightfoot is "a pioneer of what she calls human archeology." In her book I've Known Rivers, she uses interviews with six black professionals to explore both the individual experience and social experience it implies.

Lawrence-Lightfoot lives in Boston and has two children--a daughter, Tolani, and a son, Martin--but she spent her teenage years in Pomona...