Will I love Black Radical?

My other recommendations focus on mainstream, mass-audience journalism. But there has always been much more to the press than that, particularly the advocacy-journalism tradition, of which Trotter is a shining example.

His newspaper, The Guardian, published for the Black community in Boston and beyond, pushed an uncompromising vision for racial justice that was ahead of its time. But Trotter had his faults, too, and I love that this biography refuses to engage in hero worship. Instead, Greenidge presents Trotter as a complex figure and doesn’t sugarcoat the poignant sadness of his downward spiral later in life.