Veteran journalist Jack Lessenberry visits Riverstone Books to share the unforgettable stories from his new history Reason vs. Racism
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A fascinating and unique look at one of America's last remaining newspaper family's century-plus long attempts to struggle with racial issues, this book includes some fascinating stories that deserve to be better known. Most poignantly, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter risked his life to live as a Black man in the Deep South in 1948. The series and book that followed were a journalistic feat greater than the best-selling Black Like Me more than a decade later.
Jack Lessenberry has been a writer for many national and regional publications, including Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. Currently, he is a contributing editor and columnist for the Toledo Blade, and occasionally other newspapers, and is the co-author of the book, The People’s Lawyer, The Life and Times of Frank J. Kelley, the Nation’s Longest-Serving Attorney General, published by Wayne State University Press, the author of Reason vs. Racism, the century-long saga of a newspaper family and race and Thinking About the Other Fella: Avern Cohn’s Life and the Law. He lives in Huntington Woods and Charlevoix, Michigan, with his partner in life, Elizabeth, their dogs Ashley and Chet, and entirely too many and not nearly enough books.