Hello, world. Welcome to discover your talent, do what you love, number 212. I'm creator and host, Don Hutchison. Every day, I interview someone from around the world who has discovered

his talents to do work he loves to create a life of success, satisfaction, and freedom. Today,

I'm delighted to bring you our featured guest, Jim Akmoudi. Welcome, Jim. Thank you, Don. I'm

happy to be here. It's my pleasure. Jim, are you using your talents doing work that you love?

Yes, I am.

Good.

We want to hear the whole story.

Jim Ogmoudi is a writer in Atlanta, where he worked as a reporter and editor with the Atlanta

Journal Constitution for 29 years.

He's the author of the book, The Class of 65, a student, a dividedivided Town, and the Long Road to Forgiveness,

a tale of race, religion, and reconciliation, said in Coyanea, the community farm in Georgia

that gave birth to Habitat for Humanity. His next book will be a history of barbecue.

Coyanania. Jim, that's a pithy summary of your career. Tell us what you're up to now.

Well, the class of 65, the book I published earlier this year, is still very much on my mind.

It's the first non-fiction narrative book like this I've done, and it's a story that's really

close to my heart. This community, Coina, it was a really unusual experimental Christian communal

farm in southwest Georgia. And the residents there believed in racial equality and pacifism

at a time when those were really dangerous concepts in the Deep South. During the 50s, when the

civil rights revolution came to rural Georgia, Coinonea was persecuted, shot at, boycotted for years.

The farm's children had a particularly hard time when they entered the local high school

and found themselves blamed for the social changes.

Most of their classmates, I'm really opposed.

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