American Lives: Black Heroes of the 20th Century

Linda Hervieux is a journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, the New York Daily News, and Fodor's Paris.  In Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War (Harper) Hervieux reveals the injustices of 1940s Jim Crow America in this extraordinary blend of military and social history—a story that pays tribute to the valor of an all-black battalion whose crucial contributions at D-Day have gone unrecognized to this day.  In telling the story of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, Hervieux offers a vivid account of the tension between racial politics and national service in wartime America, and a moving narrative of human bravery and perseverance in the face of injustice.

Rufus Jones Jr. is an orchestral conductor, published author, and educator. His research has focused on African American classical musicians. Dr. Jones has conducted orchestras of all levels for over two decades and is in demand as a guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator. In Dean Dixon: Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), conductor and scholar Rufus Jones Jr. brings to light a literal treasure trove of unpublished primary sources to tell the compelling story of this great American conductor. A testament to Dixon’s resolve, this first-ever full-length biography of this American musical hero chronicles Dixon’s musical upbringing, beginnings as a conductor, painful decision to leave his own country, rise to fame in Europe and his triumphant stand twenty-one years later when he returned to the United States to serve as a model for aspiring Black classical musicians.

Sonja D. Williams is a professor in the Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Howard University and the winner of three George Foster Peabody Awards as a radio producer. Her credits include the radio series Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions and Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was. Her latest book is Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom (University of Illinois Press). Posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007, Richard Durham creatively chronicled and brought to life the significant events of his times. In Word Warrior, Williams draws on archives and hard-to-access family records, as well as interviews with family and colleagues like Studs Terkel and Toni Morrison, to illuminate Durham's astounding career. Durham paved the way for black journalists as a dramatist and a star investigative reporter and editor for the pioneering black newspapers the Chicago Defender and Muhammed Speaks. Incisive and in-depth, Word Warrior tells the story of a tireless champion of African American freedom, equality, and justice during an epoch that forever changed a nation.