“Steigerwald is an author who always delights and informs, here recounting the frightening story of two courageous men.” David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author
Description
In 1948, most white people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the ten million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous white journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a black man in the Jim Crow South.
Escorted through the South’s parallel black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a historic black civil-rights pioneer from Atlanta, Sprigle met with sharecroppers, local black leaders, and families of lynching victims. He visited ramshackle black schools and slept at the homes of prosperous black farmers and doctors. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter’s series was syndicated coast to coast in white newspapers and carried into the South only by the Pittsburgh Courier, the country’s leading black paper. His vivid descriptions and undisguised outrage at “the iniquitous Jim Crow system” shocked the North, enraged the South, and ignited the first national debate in the media about ending America’s system of apartheid.
Six years before Brown v. Board of Education, seven before the murder of Emmett Till, and thirteen before John Howard Griffin’s similar experiment became the bestseller Black Like Me, Sprigle’s intrepid journalism blasted into the American consciousness the grim reality of black lives in the South.
Praise
“Steigerwald is an author who always delights and informs, here recounting the frightening story of two courageous men.” David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author
“A vivid, well-researched account of a journalistic coup.” Paul Theroux, New York Times bestselling author
“A fascinating account…Sprigle’s audacity was forgotten, but Steigerwald turns it into rollicking, haunting American history.” Kirkus Reviews
“Steigerwald’s recounting of Sprigle’s mission…reminds us of what an honest conversation about race can accomplish.” Juan Williams, New York Times bestselling author
“An unflinching examination of race relations in this country’s recent past and the true impact that uncompromising journalism can have on our world.” Jesse Holland, author of Black Men Built the Capitol
Details
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| Release Day | Jul 3, 2017 |
| Release Date | July 4, 2017 |
| Release Date Machine | 1499126400 |
| Imprint | Blackstone Publishing |
| Provider | Blackstone Publishing |
| Categories | Biographies & Memoirs, History, Professionals & Academics, Americas, Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Nonfiction - Adult, Nonfiction - All |
Author Bio
Bill Steigerwald’s thirty-six-year career as a journalist included stints with the Los Angeles Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. His work has appeared in dozens of major American papers and in magazines as disparate as Reason, Family Circle, and Penthouse. He lives just outside Pittsburgh.
Narrator Bio
Grover Gardner (a.k.a. Tom Parker) is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.
Overview
In 1948, most white people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the ten million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous white journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a black man in the Jim Crow South.
Escorted through the South’s parallel black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a historic black civil-rights pioneer from Atlanta, Sprigle met with sharecroppers, local black leaders, and families of lynching victims. He visited ramshackle black schools and slept at the homes of prosperous black farmers and doctors. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter’s series was syndicated coast to coast in white newspapers and carried into the South only by the Pittsburgh Courier, the country’s leading black paper. His vivid descriptions and undisguised outrage at “the iniquitous Jim Crow system” shocked the North, enraged the South, and ignited the first national debate in the media about ending America’s system of apartheid.
Six years before Brown v. Board of Education, seven before the murder of Emmett Till, and thirteen before John Howard Griffin’s similar experiment became the bestseller Black Like Me, Sprigle’s intrepid journalism blasted into the American consciousness the grim reality of black lives in the South.
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