All Blood Runs Red: the legendary life of Eugene Bullard-boxer, pilot, soldier, spy by Phil Keith with Tom Clavin

All Blood Runs Red: the legendary life of Eugene Bullard-boxer, pilot, soldier, spy by Phil Keith with Tom Clavin
352 pages

"Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the twentieth century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of eleven to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African American fighter pilot in history.

"After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun.

"All Blood Runs Red is the inspiring untold story of an American hero, a thought-provoking chronicle of the twentieth century and a portrait of a man who came from nothing and by his own courage, determination, gumption, intelligence and luck forged a legendary life."  --from the publisher

What an amazing person! I'd like to have half his adventurous spirit. The authors do a great job relating his story and putting it in context of world events. I give it four out of five stars.

Uncensored by Zachary R. Wood

Uncensored by Zachary R. Wood
272 pages

"As the president of the student group Uncomfortable Learning at Williams College, Zachary Wood knows all about intellectual controversy...there's no one Zach refuses to debate or engage with simply because he disagrees with their beliefs - sometimes vehemently so - and this controversial view has given him a unique platform on college campuses and in the media.

"By sharing his troubled upbringing - from a difficult early childhood filled with pain, uncertainty, and conflict to the struggles of code-switching between his home in a rough neighborhood and his elite private school - Zach makes a compelling argument for a new way of interacting with others in a nation and a world that has never felt more polarized. In Uncensored, he hopes to foster a new outlook on society's most difficult conversations, both on campus and beyond."    --from the publisher

This is an incredible story from a tenacious young man whose greatest accomplishment may be that he isn't mad at the world.  I love that his desire to speak intelligently about his beliefs doesn't mean silencing or berating someone with whom he disagrees.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly - 543 pages

The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space—a powerful, revelatory contribution that is as essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as Between the World and Me and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.

Ceremonies: Prose & Poetry, by Essex Hemphill

 Ceremonies: Prose & Poetry, by Essex Hemphill, 200 pages

Since it is Black History month, I am trying to read a few works by black authors.  Essex Hemphill is a gay black poet who wrote essays, too, usually about the unique experience of being a gay, black man.  His poems were powerful (and sexually explicit, so consider yourself warned), as were his essays.  I had not read any of his essays, but they were very provocative- one addresses the schism in the gay community between white and black men; another addresses what he argues are the exploitative photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe (who is usually considered unassailable); and another discusses one of my favorite documentaries- Paris is Burning, about the gay ball scene in New York City.  I thought this was a refreshing read from a point of view I rarely see.