Author(s): Gregory S. Parks (Editor); Matthew W. Hughey (Editor); Lani Guinier (Introduction by)

Biography & Memoir

Called a book "which is factual yet reads like a novel" by the Huffington Post, 12 Angry Men reveals some pointed truths about our nation, as a dozen eloquent authors from across the United States tell their personal stories of being racially profiled.

We hear from Joe Morgan, a former Major League Baseball MVP, who was tackled and falsely arrested at the Los Angeles airport; Paul Butler, a federal prosecutor who was detained while walking in his own neighborhood in Washington, D.C.; Kent, a devoted husband and father, hauled into central booking for trespassing and loitering when he visits his mother's housing project; Solomon Moore, a former criminal justice reporter for the New York Times, detained by the police while on assignment in North Carolina; and King Downing, former head of the ACLU's racial profiling initiative, who was himself pursued by National Guardsmen after arriving on the red-eye in Boston's Logan Airport.

A narrative of another America for men of color emerges in 12 Angry Men as "a dozen brothers are allowed to give full vent to their feelings about an] indignity routinely suffered by the majority of African American males" and, in doing so, reveal "a serious impediment to the collective American Dream of a colorblind society" (the nationally syndicated Pittsburgh Urban Media).