Historian and journalist Lerone Bennett Jr., "who wrote extensively on race relations and black history and was a top editor at Ebony magazine for decades," died February 14, the New York Times reported. He was 89. Bennett "was both lyrical and outspoken in his writing, arguing that the history of black people in the United States had been ignored or told only through a white filter."
His best-known book was Before the Mayflower, published in 1962, though revised editions were still being released decades later. The work established him "as a leading scholarly voice during the racial ferment of the 1960s," the Times wrote.
Bennett's other titles include Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (2000); What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (1964); Black Power U.S.A.: The Human Side of Reconstruction, 1867-1877 (1967); and The Shaping of Black America (1975).