Dr. David Beito’s T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer Named Best Biography

Book cover for T.R.M. Howard biographyDrs. David Beito and Linda Royster Beito’s recent work, T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer, won the 31st Annual Benjamin Franklin Award for best biography from the Independent Book Publishers Association, the largest organization of book publishers in the United States.

T.R.M. Howard was selected from a field of more than one hundred entrants. It tells the remarkable story of one of the early leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Howard was a respected surgeon, important black community leader, and successful businessman. His story reveals the importance of the black middle class, their endurance and entrepreneurship in the midst of Jim Crow, and their critical role in the early Civil Rights Movement.

Howard founded black community organizations, organized civil rights rallies and boycotts, championed free enterprise, critiqued big government and socialism, mentored Medgar Evers, fought the Ku Klux Klan, and helped lead the fight for justice for Emmett Till and others. Raised in poverty and witness to racial violence from a young age, Howard was passionate about justice and equality.