Clifton L. Taulbert - Eight Habits of the Heart: Embracing the Values that Build Strong Families and Communities

Praise for EIGHT HABITS OF THE HEART

A beautiful and gentle booka healing work.

Jonathan Kozol

Taulbert draws wisdom and lessons for todayfrom the strong hearts and giving minds [of his elders].

USA Today

Anyone sincere in wanting to build better community needs to readno, digest this book.

Louisville Courier-Journal

This deceptively simple book is both wise and important. Clifton Taulberts loving and eloquent voice is a precious national resource.

Michael Medved

A USA Today notable inspirational book of 1997

PENGUIN BOOKS

EIGHT HABITS OF THE HEART

Clifton L. Taulbert, an internationally renowned speaker, is the author of the acclaimed memoirs Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, the basis for the critically acclaimed feature film, the Pulitzer nominee The Last Train North, and Watching Our Crops Come In. Mr. Taulbert was the winner of the 27th annual NAACP Image Award for Literature. He was also one of the first African American writers to win the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Nonfiction and was named one of Americas outstanding black entrepreneurs by Time magazine. A sought-after lecturer and workshop leader on community-building, Mr. Taulbert lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his wife and son.

Also by Clifton L. Taulbert
O NCE U PON A T IME W HEN W E W ERE C OLORED
T HE L AST T RAIN N ORTH
W ATCHING O UR C ROPS C OME I N
L ITTLE C LIFF AND THE P ORCH P EOPLE

EIGHT
HABITS
OF
THE
HEART

Embracing the Values that
Build Strong Families
and Communities

C LIFTON L. T AULBERT

Penguin Books

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin and
Dial Books, members of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1997
Published in Penguin Books 1999

Copyright Clifton L. Taulbert, 1997
All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE
VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Taulbert, Clifton L.

Eight habits of the heart : the timeless values that build strong
communitieswithin our homes and our lives / Clifton L. Taulbert
p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-65588-7

1. Afro-AmericansMississippiGlen AllanSocial life and customs. 2. Afro-AmericansMississippiGlen AllanConduct of life. 3. Conduct of life. 4. Glen Allan (Miss.)Social life and customs. 5. Taulbert, Clifton L.Childhood and youth. 6. Glen Allan (Miss.)Biography. I. Title.

F349.G54T37 1997

976.242dc21 974230

DESIGNED BY BRIAN MULLIGAN

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

The book is dedicated to all of us who share life on this
planet. The quality of life we enjoy will be determined
by the quality of community we build, at home, where we
work, where we study, and where we play.

I want to thank three special friends for encouraging me to write this book and helping me to shape and title it: Charlotte Stewart, Vicki Lake, and Dr. Delores Saunders. I want also to thank Kevin Randolph, Paul Perkinson, John Knight, and Julie Hall, the head of the North Shore Country Day School, for providing the wonderful graduates who caused me to focus on the gifts my people had given me and gave me the opportunity to pass them along.

A special thanks also to my wife, Barbara, and son, Marshall, for keeping me attuned to my need to practice these habits at home. And to our darling daughter, Anne Kathryn, who during her short seven years of life gave us the opportunity to live these ideals in front of her, ideals that I know she would want us to pass along.

They were my benefactors and I was their heir, but they had no stocks or bonds to give me. My parents, relatives, and neighbors simply gave me the best of what they had. Although they lived behind a wall called legal segregation, they ignored its boundaries when it came to nurturing their children. Instead, gathering us together on their porches, which were their principal meeting places, they set out to shield us from segregations woes by building a good community for our dreams. They, the porch people of the Mississippi Delta, knew how to build such community because their parents had built community for them.

Today, many of us need to define, and redefine, the meaning of community. When I ask the question, What is community? most people answer by immediately recalling a geographical location, a place where they once lived. However, as I have come to understand over the years and through listening to others, the full concept of community is much bigger, with consequences far beyond the place where we first experienced the touch of others in our lives. It is really the touch that defines community in every age. When I was a child, the touch looked like shared conversation after a hard day of work in the fields. It was sharing meager meals as if they were banquets. It was me and my great-aunt gathering in the wood and coal to create a warm home and stave off the winters cold. The touch looked like math problems being explained and lunch money given. It looked like long walks together to Lake Washington, where fishing was mandatory. It looked like my great-aunt standing on her narrow front porch each morning for four years alerting the bus driver that I was indeed going to school that day. It looked like Miss Sarah Fields pulling out her orange crate box to make an extra place at her supper table. In the place I rememeber, we valued each other and shared our lives.