Williams, Sonja D. Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom. Illinois, 2015. 250p bibl index afp ISBN 9780252081392 pbk, $26.00; ISBN 9780252039874, $95.00; ISBN 9780252097980 ebook, contact publisher for price.
With this book, Williams (Howard Univ.) rescues a forgotten but important voice in the Civil Rights Movement. Whether Durham (1917–84) was writing poetry, reporting, or creating radio and television scripts, his subjects remained the same: justice for the African American community and the injustice of segregation. Inspired by Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, Durham began his literary career as a poet in the late 1920s. By the mid-1930s, he was a writer for the Illinois Writer’s Project, profiling the state’s African American community. By the 1940s, he was a reporter for the Chicago Defender, where he focused on the illegality of segregation. The newspaper sponsored a radio series written by Durham, Democracy USA, in which he focused on forgotten historical black heroes. In 1947, he wrote and produced the radio program Here Comes Tomorrow, the first radio drama to highlight an African American family. In the 1960s–70s, he was the editor of Muhammad Speaks, the journal of the Nation of Islam, and wrote co-wrote Muhammad Ali’s autobiography, The Greatest: My Story (1975). Williams details all this in this well-written analytical profile of this important, versatile writer.
Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.
–D. O. Cullen, Collin College