Reason vs. Racism

A fascinating and unique look at one of America's last remaining newspaper famil'’s century-plus long attempt to struggle with racial issues, this book includes some fascinating stories that deserve to be better known.
These include the story of Tom Lee, a poor black laborer in the Deep South who heroically saved the lives of more than thirty white people in Memphis in 1925. Company founder Paul Block praised him in his Memphis newspaper and took him to meet the President of the United States – and was promptly run out of town by irate white racists.
Most poignantly, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter risked his life to live as a Black man in the Deep South in 1948. The series and book that followed were a journalistic feat greater than the best-selling Black Like Me more than a decade later.
In an era marked by intense controversy over how media cover race, this ground-breaking book is an important and compelling addition to the debate.    

Jack Lessenberry has been a writer for many national and regional publications, including Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Currently, he is a contributing editor and columnist for the Toledo Blade, and occasionally other newspapers, and is the co-author of the book, The People’s Lawyer, The Life and Times of Frank J. Kelley, the Nation’s Longest-Serving Attorney General, published by Wayne State University Press. He lives in Huntington Woods and Charlevoix, Michigan, with his partner in life, Elizabeth, their dogs Ashley and Chet, and entirely too many and not nearly enough books.