Terry Gross

Higginbotham served in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He's an expert on race and the legal process and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His new book is "Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process"

Poet and professor Miller Williams. He teaches at the University of Arkansas. He's been asked to read at Clinton's Inauguration. He's also President Carter's poetry mentor. Miller is best known for his narrative, dramatic, poems of everyday people. He's had a number of collection of poems published. His latest is "The Ways We Touch." (University of Illinois Press) which was originally scheduled for a Fall 1997 release, but moved up because of the inauguration.

As a child in the sixties and seventies, Tate was a member of the Nation of Islam, and witnessed the struggles of blacks in a predominantly white America. In her autobiography, "Little X," she tracks the personal history of her family and draws on their everyday experiences as members of the Nation to bring new understanding to its traditions.