Cornel West has been articulate, outspoken and politically engaged ever since he was a small child. West's mother, a schoolteacher, and father, an Air Force civil servant, brought their two sons and two daughters to church every Sunday. When he was young he would hang out on the streets of Sacramento and talk to members of the Black Panthers about democratic socialism. West was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 2, 1953, and West's family moved to Sacramento five years later. As a child in elementary school, he convinced a group of kids to refuse to say the pledge allegiance to the flag to protest the second-class citizenship afforded to African Americans. In high school he excelled in scholarship and athletics. These acts of Cornel West are the signs of a future leader.

West won a scholarship to Harvard in 1970, and says that he was unashamed being black and unashamed...