FROM BEHIND THE SCREEN

A Black civil rights icon and politician offers an account of his eventful life.

Graves, who was born in the late 1930s in New Orleans, recalls that his first clear memory was learning about the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Although his parents were distraught that the surprise assault meant that the country was going to war, he remembers his father sprang into action, serving as a neighborhood air raid warden: He knew that the port city he called home could be a potential target. This opening anecdote sets the tone in a book that not only honors the author’s family legacy (“As a child you learn so much sitting at the knees of your parents”), but also emphasizes that service to country begins at the community level and runs deeper than superficial displays of patriotism. While attending Texas Southern University in the early 1960s, Graves co-founded the Progressive Youth Association, a grassroots organization that was instrumental in organizing sit-ins, marches, and other civil rights demonstrations in Houston. In 1966, he joined Barbara Jordan and Joe Lockridge as the first Black people elected to the Texas House of Representatives; Graves would remain a representative until 1973. Overall, his conversational, down-to-earth prose contrasts with the grandeur of his life as a trailblazing figure in Texas. It’s an engaging narrative in which deeply important figures of the 1960s, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Andrew Young, make appearances. His remembrances are accompanied by a wealth of visual elements, including family snapshots, historical photos of Graves from the civil rights era, and images of campaign buttons and other ephemera. Graves’ life certainly makes for a compelling account, and it takes some fascinating turns (e.g., he would later work for NASA as the deputy director of civil affairs). What makes his book even more special is his skill at putting his family’s story in the context of a larger narrative, while offering insightful analysis of Black history in America.

A powerful and inspiring memoir of an activist.