Andrew Billingsley discusses his new book, *Yearning to Breathe Free*, the biography of Robert Smalls, a South Carolina slave who became a Civil War hero and US Congressman. Mae Gentry, Atlanta-Journal Constitution writer and expert on the African American experience, moderates.
Former reporter and editor for the Southeast's largest daily newspaper, Mae Gentry previously worked for *the Chicago Sun-Times* and Johnson Publishing Company. She has also taught journalism and Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University. Currently Gentry works in the Office of Institutional Advancement at Morehouse College, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the nation, and does communications consulting in her spare time.