Julius Lester, Chronicler of Black America, Is Dead at 78

FILE -- Police officers escort writer Julius Lester to the WBAI studios through demonstrators protesting the reading of an anti-Semitic poem on his radio show, in New York, Jan. 30, 1969. Lester, a captivating and often polarizing American writer whose odyssey through a labyrinth of religious and ethnic identities caused him to be labeled a militant black separatist and a race traitor, as well as an anti-Semite and, after his conversion to Judaism, a vociferous Zionist, died on Jan. 18, 2018, in Palmer, Mass. He was 78. (William E. Sauro/The New York Times)