Knocking Down Barriers: Fighting for Black America »

Sixty years ago, when Truman Gibson reported for duty at the War Department, Washington, D.C. was a southern city in its unbending segregation as well as in its steamy summers. Gibson had no illusions, but as someone who'd enjoyed the best of the vibrant black culture of prewar America, he was shocked to find the worst of the Jim Crow South in the nation's capital. What Gibson accomplished as an advocate for African American soldiers-first as a lawyer working for the Secretary of War, then as a member of President Truman's "Black Cabinet"—is a large part of the history of the struggle for civil rights in the American military; and it is a compelling part of the story that Gibson tells in this book, a memoir of a life spent making a difference in the world one step at a time.

A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Gibson took his fight for racial justice to the corridors of powers, arguing against restrictive real estate covenants before the U.S. Supreme Court, opposing such iconic figures as Generals Dwight Eisenhower and George C. Marshall in campaigning for the integration of the armed forces, and challenging white control of professional sports by creating a boxing promotion empire that made television history. A firsthand account of the nitty-gritty of twentieth-century race relations in the worlds of law, the military, sports, and entertainment, Gibson's memoir is also an engaging recollection of encounters with the likes of Thurgood Marshall, W. E. B. DuBois, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Patton, Jackie Robinson, and Joe Louis, among others. As a historical record and as an intimate look at a bygone era with all its charms and hardships, the book is anessential chapter in our nation's story.

Publishers Weekly

Gibson's first claim to fame was as a civilian aide to the secretary of war during WWII, a position in which he fought for fair treatment of black servicemen and for an integrated military, and was influential in Truman's presidential order to desegregate the armed forces. In recounting this struggle, the bulk of his memoir, Gibson offers a veritable history of the black soldier, jam-packed with rich and revealing details of humiliation and heroism. Gibson had met Joe Louis in 1935 and organized team of boxers who entertained the troops with Louis as the anchor. Their "friendship matured," and Gibson found his second claim to fame in "a line of work I never dreamed I'd find myself in": a boxing promoter and officer of the International Boxing Club. While providing a fascinating glimpse of the multifaceted world he has lived in-one that encompasses directing the American Negro Exposition and fighting restrictive housing covenants in Hansberry v. Lee; knowing Frank Capra, Frank Carbo, Gen. Benjamin O. Davis and Sugar Ray Robinson; helping Errol Flynn's widow with inheritance problems and Joe Louis with tax problems-Gibson's spare account of five of his nine decades makes a valuable contribution to military history. (Aug.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.