BLACK IN SELMA The Uncommon Life of J. L. Chestnut Jr.<i> By J.L. Chestnut Jr. and Julia Cass (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $22.95; 397 pp.) </i>

” . . . unfolds with the richness of character that one expects, say, in a novel or a great-uncle’s story delivered late at night on a Southern porch after the dishes have been put away and a few jugs have been uncorked.”