Book excerpt: A son of ex-slaves raises himself up to be a physician and the personal physician to Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. John A. Kenney, M.D. is one of the most important unsung African American heroes of the twentieth century. Beacon on the Hill is based on Kenney's papers and journals dating back to 1895. Kenney traveled with Booker T. Washington on his Goodwill Tours throughout the South, founded a hospital for blacks at Tuskegee, and was forced out of Alabama by the Ku Klux Klan. Relocating to Newark, New Jersey he built his own hospital for blacks which he gave to the people of Newark as a Christmas gift in 1934. This novel demonstrates the trials and tribulations of the Negro physician in the 20th century and offers an explanation of the slave mentality which plagued the race then and now.