12 Angry Men - by Gregory S Parks & Matthew W Hughey (Paperback)

About the Book

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").

Book Synopsis

"Beautifully written, painfully honest" first-person accounts of racial profiling, as experienced by a dozen black men from all over America (Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow).

In an era of contentious debate about controversial police practices and, more broadly, the significance of implications of race throughout American life, 12 Angry Men is an urgent, moving, and timely book that exposes "a serious impediment to the collective American Dream of a colorblind society" (Pittsburgh Urban Media).

In this "extraordinarily compelling" book, a dozen eloquent authors tell their own personal stories of being racially profiled. From a Harvard law school student tackled by a security guard on the streets of Manhattan, a federal prosecutor detained while walking in his own neighborhood in Washington, DC, and a high school student in Colorado arrested for "loitering" in the subway station as he waits for the train home, to a bike rider in Austin, Texas, a professor at a Big Ten university in Iowa, and the head of the ACLU's racial profiling initiative (who was pursued by national guardsmen after arriving on the red-eye in Boston's Logan airport), here are true stories of law-abiding Americans who also happen to be black men (Publishers Weekly).

Cumulatively, the effect is staggering, and will open the eyes of anyone who thinks we live in a "post-racial" or "colorblind" America.

"Powerful." --Jet

"This is raw testimony intended to vividly capture the invasions of privacy and the assaults on dignity that always accompany unreasonable government intrusion." --Kirkus Reviews

Review Quotes

Praise for 12 Angry Men:
"Powerful."
--Jet

"This is raw testimony intended to vividly capture the invasions of privacy and the assaults on dignity that always accompany unreasonable government intrusion."
--Kirkus Reviews

"This collection offers a dozen moving testimonials against a practice that pervades...Read it, and it will change the way you look at the world."
--David Cole, Georgetown University

"Extraordinarily compelling. Bantamweight in size, this book packs a heavyweight wallop."
--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Gregory S. Parks is an attorney in private practice and a co-editor of Critical Race Realism (The New Press). He lives in Washington, D.C. Matthew W. Hughey is an assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University, where he lives, and is the co-editor of The Obamas and a (Post) Racial America. Lani Guinier, a professor at Harvard Law School, was the first black woman ever to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Miner's Canary and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.