Former Austinite Andrew Maraniss returns to town to discuss his New York Times bestselling book STRONG INSIDE, the untold story of civil rights pioneer Perry Wallace.
Wallace, now a professor of law at American University in Washington, D.C., was the first African American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference, playing at Vanderbilt in the late 1960s. Having grown up in Nashville during the height of the civil rights movement, Wallace made history on the basketball courts of the Deep South, traveling to places like Oxford, Mississippi and Tuscaloosa, Alabama just a few years after James Meredith and Gov. George Wallace captured the nation’s attention on those campuses.
Wallace was an uncommon basketball star, a high school valedictorian, engineering student, and campus leader who interacted with civil rights figures such as Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer and Robert F. Kennedy.
STRONG INSIDE has placed on the New York Times bestseller lists in both the civil rights and sports categories each month since it debuted in December, the top-selling book in the history of Vanderbilt University Press. Come learn a fascinating story you never knew you were missing out on!
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