Media Request

In 1950, a Negro man named Hilliard Brooks was shot and killed by a white policeman during an encounter involving a ride on a city bus. Brooks and Thomas Gray played football together as kids. Gray and other fellow veterans, outraged about an unjustifiable fatal shooting, protested, eventually staging a major march against police brutality downtown. Five years later, Gray protested again, this time against the unjust treatment of Negroes on the city's segregated buses. Author Karen Gray Houston's father, Thomas Gray, and her uncle, Fred D. Gray, were boycott leaders. Fred Gray represented Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and rarely mentioned teenage activist Claudette Colvin, a named plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the Supreme Court case that forced Alabama to desegregate its buses. Only as an adult did Houston began to appreciate how, in the face of threats and bombings, their bold, selfless actions helped change the nation’s racial climate, opening doors of opportunity for her and countless others. Daughter of the Boycott takes the reader on a journey through the struggles Houston’s family faced before and after the boycott, including the violence and setbacks. With the trained eye of an investigative reporter, she gives voice to the lives affected by this historical moment.