However, some people are born storytellers. From generation to generation, families have handed down history, traditions and values orally.

In the South - I was raised in Florida - there were always elders who were gifted with the ability to tell stories and their memories seemed to extend back beyond their natural lives.

Glimmers of this ability, I suspect, survived the Middle Passage. Before our American experience, griots in West Africa were historians and storytellers.

Nayra Atiya, who was born in Egypt, raised in the United States and now lives in Salt Lake City, thrives in the realm of oral traditions. She is an oral historian, writer and translator.

Last week, Atiya's sixth book was released. France Davis: An American Story Told is oral history. The book's subject is the Rev. France Davis, longtime pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, community leader and professor at the University of Utah.

Davis and Atiya presented last Saturday at the Great Salt Lake Book Festival at the Salt Lake City Main Library.

"I told the story and Nayra wrote it," Davis said. "These types of stories are important because many people cannot remember the day when . . . They know nothing about 'separate but equal,' Martin Luther King or Malcolm X."

Atiya taped interviews and conversations with Davis starting in 2000. She said, "I didn't use transcribers ever. The most important thing is the listening part. You intuit as the story is being told to you. Reverend is a preacher. His storytelling skills are finely honed."

"An oral history allows one to speak to people of influence - father, mother, cousin - people who have made a difference in your life," Davis said. "It's a book about travel. I have traveled all over the world. How many of you would believe it if I told you last night I was in Russia?"

After a pause, Davis said, "In a book you can go places that you can never go physically."

Davis' roots are in rural Georgia, where segregation was the order of the day. His age group saw many changes in America, including Brown vs. Board of Education, the civil rights movement, acquisition of the right to vote, black power, Black Nationalism and the quest for equal opportunity.

For sure, there is a cornucopia of lessons to be learned and shared in the book.

"The book is about strategies for survival," Davis said. "In my case, it was strategies to make it through a hostile world, how I was to pastor a church and survive living in Salt Lake City. The major thing the book is about is my spiritual formulation, grace, opportunities and those who help you along the way."

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* COREY J. HODGES writes about current events and ideas from a moral perspective. Hodges, the senior pastor of the New Pilgrim Baptist Church in Taylorsville, welcomes comments at coreyjhodges@ comcast.net. You may also comment at religioneditor@ sltrib.com.