In 1959, a guidance counselor at the recently integrated Coolidge High School in the nation’s capital advised a black student to lower his sights in the college admissions process. For the past 58 years, Hugh Price has been proving that counselor wrong.

From 1994 to 2003, Price served as president of the National Urban League, where he launched a national campaign to raise the academic achievement of black youth. The author of four books on education reform, he’s out now with a new memoir, This African-American Life, in which he tells his own remarkable story.

Hugh Price joins Marty West in this episode of the Education Next podcast.

You can read an excerpt from his new book on the Education Next website.

The EdNext Podcast is available on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, Stitcher and here every Wednesday

—Education Next