Posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007, Richard Durham creatively chronicled and brought to life the significant events of his times. Durham's trademark narrative style engaged listeners with fascinating characters, compelling details, and sharp images of pivotal moments in American and African American history and culture. In Word Warrior, award-winning radio producer Sonja D. Williams draws on archives and hard-to-access family records, as well as interviews with family and colleagues like Studs Terkel and Toni Morrison, to illuminate Durham's astounding career. Durham paved the way for black journalists as a dramatist and a star investigative reporter and editor for the pioneering black newspapers the Chicago Defender and Muhammed Speaks. Talented and versatile, he also created the acclaimed radio series Destination Freedom and Here Comes Tomorrow and wrote for popular radio fare like The Lone Ranger. Incredibly, his energies extended still further--to community and labor organizing, advising Chicago mayoral hopeful Harold Washington, and mentoring generations of activists. Incisive and in-depth, Word Warrior tells the story of a tireless champion of African American freedom, equality, and justice during an epoch that forever changed a nation.
""Sonja Williams has written a book about Durham's life and work, cementing the brilliant journalist and activist's legacy.""--Uprising Radio ""Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom is a remarkable contribution to the historical narrative, to our understanding of the long civil rights revolution.--People's World""The enigmatic life of writer and radio [dramatist] Richard Durham has, for years, cried out for probing and understanding. Sonja D. Williams has answered the call with this fiercely smart and important book. It is an important achievement.""--Wil Haygood, author of The Butler: A Witness to History ""Sonja Williams' exhaustively researched biography of Richard Durham sheds valuable light on an inexcusably neglected historical figure. Throughout his many lives, including activism, writing, and broadcasting, Durham demonstrated the importance of narrative in the struggle for justice. As Williams proves, the right to tell the story is a critical part of the quest for equality and power--and those who fought for that right should be remembered with gratitude.""--Jabari Asim, author of What Obama Means ""Sonja Williams artfully links broadcasting pioneer Richard Durham to the key social, cultural, and political movements of mid-Twentieth-century America. In Word Warrior, Durham's fierce spirit, strategic mind, and creative genius leap to life as he navigates the streets, boardrooms, and radio studios of Chicago. Without this book, this very important story surely would have been lost.""--A'Lelia Bundles, author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker ""In briskly energetic prose, Sonja D. Williams reveals the life of an important, but little-known, figure in twentieth century African American cultural and political history. From the Great Migration to the Black Power Movement, Richard Durham's story illuminates movements and events of momentous scope and significance.""--Richard A. Courage, co-author of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 19321950 ""Williams' book does smart and invaluable work not only about Durham and his particular talents and contributions, but about the black political and cultural left in Chicago during the span of his career.""--Barbara D. Savage, author of Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 19381948
