Meet Jean Rice

Jean Rice is an 81 year old African American changemaker. He profoundly impacts every person with whom he crosses paths. Whether it’s a during brief exchange as he panhandles near Grand Central Station or speaking to a class at one of the many venues of higher education where he has been an invited lecturer or electrifying a crowd during one of dozens of social justice protests throughout the U.S. or speaking with a room full of homeless folks trying to make sense of their situation and collectively chart a road map to change the public policies that contribute to it, Jean teaches. By seamlessly weaving personal and historic references, with wit and his uncanny ability to mic-drop, Jean leaves the audience wanting more.

Jean leads us through his eight decades as a black man in the United States. At the heart of this book is Jean’s ability to use the lens of his personal life as a means to deepen our understanding of U.S. history and present-day public policies that invisibly shape our lives. The use of oral history renders Jean’s interpretation of his own life and the country we live as immediate and true, guiding the audience to view the world through his eyes and the experience of the communities he embodies.

Self-described as born into American Apartheid in Anderson, South Carolina, Jean moved with his family to New York City as a young child, as did approximately 6 million other African Americans. Jean continuously weaves his own life history with the history of this country, turning seemingly simple stories into parables and lessons that tell the history of America itself. For Jean, history and policy aren’t remote or “academic” subjects, the type of stuff parsed only by scholars or designed to bore high school students. For Jean, they are “live” and as part of our culture as music and TV, visible in everyday life, in everyone’s life; he brings them to life through his own experience in a way few can. He makes them accessible and undeniable.

Jean is a man of deep Christian faith. The arc of his life story includes many complexities not often associated with religious faith. Years spent hustling—drug trafficking, pimping, engaging and experiencing acts of violence and incarceration—co-exist with a deep love for family, community, sustained by faith. Jean holds an unshakable belief in the U.S. Constitution and the values on which it’s based and how those values are betrayed by systemic racism and economic justice. Jean spent decades homeless on the streets of New York City and at age 60 joined a nascent homeless rights organization, Picture the Homeless soon after becoming a founding board member. From that platform, Jean became a respected social justice leader throughout New York City, nationally, and internationally.

Jean unapologetically interprets the meaning of his life and contextualizes it within U.S. history and his own family and faith tradition. In so doing, he reveals the extreme challenges of being a black man in the US, as well as the resilience that those challenges demanded of him and countless generations of African Americans. In sharing his full story, unvarnished and gripping, he generously offers his audience a way forward to a more just country—and insight to parts of the American experience which are too often ignored or pushed aside.