The Japanese-American activist, who died Sunday at 93, rushed to Malcolm X’s side after he was shot—and was no means a quiet bystander in the civil rights struggle.
Herb Boyd is a journalist, activist, teacher, and has authored or edited 23 books, including his most recent one, The Diary of Malcolm X co-edited with Ilyasah Shabazz. His book Baldwin's Harlem, a biography of James Baldwin, was a finalist for a 2009 NAACP Image Award. In 1995, with Robert Allen, he was a recipient of an American Book Award for Brotherman--The Odyssey of Black Men in America, an anthology. Other biographies include Pound for Pound—The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson and a young adult book on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He is an adjunct professor at City College of New York.
This has happened before, from Emmett Till to Amadou Diallo. Herb Boyd on the lack of justice for black Americans.
The death of the civil rights leader’s grandson marks the third generation in which the family has lost a member violently. By Herb Boyd.