Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard's Fight For Civil Rights and Economic Power (review)

David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito's Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power is a valuable contribution to the study of African American life and history. It is a historically informed biography that offers significant insight into the individuals, organizations, and locales necessary to understand the role and risks assumed by African American entrepreneurs in the Mississippi Delta prior to the 1980s.

Beito and Royster Beito, professor of history at the University of Alabama and associate professor of social sciences at Stillman College, respectively, present convincing evidence that black self-employed business persons used their financial resources to effect social and civic change.

In nine thematic chapters, Beito and Royster Beito deal deftly with poverty, racism, religious orientation, political identity and aspiration, relational fidelity, intra-racial conflict, fiscal responsibility, and social justice issues such as lynching and abortion. The contextual narrative in chapter 1 provides a succinct overview of Howard's family of origin and extended family; his relationship with a mentor/ patron who influenced his educational, religious, and professional formation; and a glimpse into other factors, particularly his ability to name himself and to make decisions that contributed to his evolving world view.

Chapter 2 discusses the role of informal education, specifically experience and exposure that shaped "Howard's attitudes about religion and politics" (16). Here Beito and Royster Beito rely on various sources and resources to construct a character analysis that both highlights Howard's many attributes and names in unambiguous terms problematic traits which had a profound effect on his familial and business relationships throughout his life.

We gain additional insight in chapter 3 about Howard's ability to adapt to his surroundings. His astute contextual awareness, though sometimes accompanied by impulsive decisions, influenced his pragmatic approach to various endeavors in which he was involved. With "a talent for building business and, to some extent, social relationships with influential whites" (63), Howard positioned himself to become a key social justice leader in the 1950s Mississippi Delta.

Descriptive examples of Howard's response to an economics of lynching, as contrasted with Booker T. Washington's philosophical stance on racial self-help, substantiate, in chapter 4, Beito and Royster Beito's primary claim regarding the "importance of businesspeople and professionals as pioneers in early civil-rights movements" (76). His practical approach to business and civil rights initiatives mirrored Ida B. Wells's 1892 tripartite approach to counter lynching through a combination of boycott, relocation, and dissemination of facts.

Chapter 5 details the resistance with which Howard contended in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation ruling. This decision, which shaped public and private opinions about Howard, is aptly reflected in the chapter title "The Most Hated, and the Best Loved, Man in Mississippi." His active involvement in the Emmett Till lynching trial and events subsequent to the jury's decision, recounted in chapters 6 and 7, details the extent to which Howard was willing to invest his personal resources toward a cause in which he believed.

The last two chapters chronicle Howard's life after he migrated to Chicago. Although he continued to practice medicine, his stance supporting abortion illustrates his commitment to a woman's right to choose as well as his business acumen. An entrepreneur and public figure who sought to enjoy all that life had to offer, at his death Howard's negative financial net worth was compounded by strained personal and professional relationships. But what we receive from the forthright depiction of Beito and Royster Beito is a moral mandate to employ oral histories with integrity in such a way that the narratives speak for themselves.

The book of Beito and Royster Beito expands on the work of historians Taylor Branch and David J. Garrow and journalists and commentators Diane McWhorter and Juan Williams who focus on African...