In his sixth book, HOPE: On The Mountain Of Fear, which is being released this week, nationally acclaimed Detroit journalist, author, and standard-bearer for economic justice Bankole Thompson does not dedicate his work to celebrity, power or political prestige.
Instead, Thompson makes a defining statement through the book by dedicating it to what he calls the “moral custodians” of the fight for economic justice – those whose lives and sacrifices show the distance between America’s ideals and its realities. Three forces he believes are carrying the burden of conscience in the nation because they represent the moral inheritors of America’s unfinished struggle for justice.
Thompson dedicates the book to three enduring sources of inspiration and moral courage: his 17-year-old son, Jelani Bankole Thompson; his longtime mentor and close friend, the late civil rights titan Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr.; and the millions of unsung Americans whose daily struggles embody the nation’s unfinished fight for economic justice and democratic inclusion.
The book, which examines the intersection of hope, democracy, poverty, leadership, and moral responsibility, arrives at a moment of profound national uncertainty and widening inequality. Bankole Thompson said the dedication reflects both a personal and public declaration about the people who continue to shape his conscience and convictions.
“This dedication is deeply personal,” Thompson said. “My son Jelani represents the future we are morally obligated to build and that is a future where young people inherit not despair, but possibility. Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr. represents the sacred lineage of courage, sacrifice, and nonviolent struggle that transformed America. And the everyday people fighting to survive economic hardship with dignity are the true authors of hope in this country.”
The dedication to Dr. LaFayette situates the book within a historical lineage of transformational leadership and carries extraordinary historical and moral significance.
In 2023, as chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the legendary civil rights organization founded by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. LaFayette, personally appointed Thompson to the SCLC National Board, entrusting him with leadership inside one of the most consequential moral and civil rights institutions in modern American history.
For Thompson, the appointment, which represented the first time in history that a journalist was appointed to the highest decision-making body of the organization Dr. King personally infused his legacy into, was more than professional distinction. It represented an extraordinary moral trust placed in journalism itself.
“To become the first journalist in American history and in the history of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to serve on its National Board was never something I viewed as personal elevation,” Thompson said. “I viewed it as a recognition that journalism, at its highest calling, must function as moral witness against systems that normalize human suffering.
LaFayette was a towering figure in the struggle for racial justice and one of the closest and most trusted associates of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a principal architect of the Civil Rights Movement’s nonviolent strategy and architect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was among the last surviving giants of the Civil Rights Movement until his death this year at the age of 85.
Thompson has often credited LaFayette’s mentorship as instrumental in his own public witness on issues of racial equity, democracy, and economic justice.
“Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr. comes from a generation that understood that silence in the face of injustice is itself a form of violence,” Thompson said. “Their movement demanded that institutions including the press decide whether it will stand for the voiceless or not.”
That moral tension sits at the center of HOPE: On The Mountain of Fear, a series of deeply reflective essays written by diverse group of individuals from across the country that Thompson describes in the book’s prologue as “messengers of hope.” Together they addressed some of the nation’s most pressing issues, including healthcare affordability, veterans care, housing insecurity, the state of the media, racial inequality, and the crisis of democratic trust. The book argues that hope is not passive optimism, but a moral and political strategy rooted in collective action and courageous leadership.
The dedication to “everyday Americans” pays tribute to workers, struggling families, veterans, single parents, young people, and marginalized communities often excluded from positions of power and prosperity.
“These are the people who carry the weight of America on their backs while too often remaining invisible in the national conversation,” Thompson said. “This book belongs to those who have been denied opportunity, denied dignity, and denied a fair share of the promise of democracy and yet still refuse to surrender hope.”
Sister Simone Campbell, one of the most powerful voices for social and economic justice from the American Catholic Church and a 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, who has long admired Thompson’s work, wrote the book’s foreword.
“Hope can weave us together in challenging times if we stay connected in community of some sort. Wherever we look there are opportunities to make a difference by being part of the fabric of our society. None of us have to do BIG things, but we each must do SOME thing. Hope in these challenging times might just be the new green shoots of springtime growth that we need. That is what will see us through,” Campbell wrote in the foreword.
Marc Morial, one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders and former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and who is the president and CEO of the National Urban League, the nation’s largest civil rights organization, wrote the book’s epilogue.
In it Morial described Thompson as an “award-winning journalist and public thinker,” while calling the book a “groundbreaking anthology,” adding that, “In a time of division, uncertainty, and urgent questions about the future of the American democratic experiment, HOPE: On The Mountain Of Fear is a resounding call to courage, conviction, and collective purpose.”
Among other notable figures endorsing the book is the acclaimed dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, Erwin Chemerinksy, who was named twice as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.
“At a time when the possibility of progressive change seems bleak, this collection of wonderful essays provides urgently needed hope. Written from a variety of perspectives and on many different topics, these essays provide a blueprint for a future with economic justice and meaningful equality of opportunity. The inescapable conclusion from this book is that we can make it happen,” Chemerinksy wrote in endorsing the book.
Maryland Democratic Congressman and former U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer also endorsed the book.
“Everyone in the Congress – and the country – ought to read my friend Bankole Thompson’s book. At a time when division, inequality, and injustice in America often feel inescapable, Thompson reminds us that there is a way out: the path of solidarity, democracy, and hope,” Hoyer wrote.
Thompson is set to speak about the book at the St. Paul of the Cross Retreat and Passionist Center in Detroit on Wednesday, June 24, when one of the Detroit’s most spiritual and contemplative spaces will host a dinner and book conversation in his honor. His upcoming appearance at St. Paul will mark the first time ever that Thompson will address an exclusively Catholic audience.
Significantly, Thompson’s slated speech at the Catholic institution, is also coming four weeks after Pope Leo issued a historic apology on May 25 for the Catholic Church’s role in legitimizing slavery.
Thompson has called the apology a powerful moral reckoning with history and that reckoning gives deeper urgency and contemporary relevance to his book on hope.
Widely recognized as a leading journalistic voice on economic justice and democratic accountability, Bankole Thompson is the founder of The PuLSE Institute, a national anti-poverty think tank, a twice-a-week opinion columnist for The Detroit News and host of the podcast Bankole’s Nation. He recently established The Bankole Thompson Center, a national youth leadership empowerment and training program. His work has consistently challenged systems of inequality while calling for bold moral leadership rooted in justice and inclusion.
The intellectual and moral foundation of Thompson’s work is also reflected in his previous 2023 book, Fiery Conscience, a widely discussed examination of his decades of speaking truth to power on issues of racial and economic justice.
The book was reviewed by Forbes, which described Thompson as a journalist whose work consistently challenged America to confront the realities of race, inequality, and democratic accountability.
In a rare distinction for a contemporary journalist, Fiery Conscience was also documented in the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture which is widely regarded as the premier global repository preserving the history and intellectual traditions of the Black experience.
For Thompson, the placement of Fiery Conscience within the Schomburg Center carries profound symbolic meaning.
“To have one’s work preserved inside the Schomburg Center, an institution safeguarding the intellectual and moral history of Black struggle, resistance, and thought is deeply humbling,” Thompson said. “It reinforces the belief that journalism must do more than narrate events. It must challenge societies to confront uncomfortable truths about power, inequality, and human dignity.”
In 2015, in a rare honor for a living journalist, the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library wrote a letter to Thompson officially requesting to establish the Bankole Thompson Papers to document his work for posterity, alongside the papers of every Michigan governor.
In 2018, the late civil rights leader Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. personally presented Thompson with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s Let Freedom Ring Journalism Award during a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary death of Dr. King and praising the journalist as a preeminent voice of conscience and courage.
HOPE: On The Mountain Of Fear continues Thompson’s longstanding mission of speaking truth to power while advancing a vision of hope anchored in economic justice, democratic renewal, and human dignity.
