Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., grew up in a family of eight children in East Harlem, New York. He is a veteran of the civil rights movement, serving as Southern Field Director of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. He is currently a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Judge Baker Children's Center. Dr. Poussaint is coauthor of Raising Black Children and Lay My Burden Down .