12 Angry Men

True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today
Edited by:

Introduction by Lani Guinier

Contemporary, first-person accounts of racial profiling, as experienced by a dozen black men from all walks of life and all parts of our so-called post-racial country

“Beautifully written, painfully honest.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

Called a book that “is factual yet reads like a novel” on the Huffington Post, 12 Angry Men reveals some pointed truths about our nation as a dozen African American authors from across the United States tell their personal stories of being racially profiled.

In this “extraordinarily compelling” (Publishers Weekly) book, we hear tales of injustice from Joe Morgan, a former Major League Baseball MVP; Paul Butler, a federal prosecutor; Kent, a devoted 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; and King Downing, a former head of the ACLU’s racial profiling initiative.

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).

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Praise

“These men make clear we do not live in a ‘post-racial’ America.”
—Library Journal
“Powerful.”
—Jet
“Extraordinarily compelling. . . . This collection puts faces to the problem, demonstrating that racial profiling occurs in both big cities and small towns . . . 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
“Bantamweight in size, this book packs a heavy wallop.”
—Publishers Weekly

Goodreads Reviews