John Ridley is a multi-faceted talent in film, television, and publishing. The author of three highly regarded novels and a former producer on NBC's Third Watch, he wrote and produced the film Undercover Brother, conceived the story for Three Kings, and wrote and directed Cold Around the Heart. His critically acclaimed novel Stray Dogs was made into the movie U-Turn, directed by Oliver Stone. In addition, he is also a regular commentator for National Public Radio.
(bio courtesy. Warner Books)

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"What do you want?"
"I want the Ed Sullivan Show."
At the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, like a lot of black Americans, comedian Jackie Mann wanted to be somebody. And for him there was only one way to achieve that: to make it big. Make it, no matter the cost: friends, family, one's own self-esteem and self-respect. This is the story of a young man's journey from Harlem to stardom, a story

of Hollywood royalty, New York glitterati, Vegas Mafiosi, Northern bigotry, and Southern racism. This is a story of love, honor, betrayal, and redemption; of fame bought and paid for by any means necessary. It is the story of one man's desire and an entire race's demands, and the incredible moment when the two came together as one. This is the story of Jackie Mann.

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"He was Charles Harmon, a black man "living white" and living well - beautiful wife, German car, big house - in an upper-upper-middle-class suburb of Los Angeles." "He is Brain Nigger Charlie, a train tramp eking out a ragged existence on the railroads, leaning on drugs to keep him from thinking about everything he had, everything his creeping dementia has forced him to run from." Charlie's been asked a desperate favor: find the seventeen-year-old niece of the man who taught him how to survive the rails - a girl lost somewhere on the High Line, the "corridors of racist hate" along the tracks of the Pacific Northwest. Charlie has little hope of finding her alive, but the request is an obligation he can't refuse. The search is a twisted trail that leads from Iowa to Washington State, mixing lies and deceit, hate and hopelessness, and brutal, stubbornly unsolved murders. All of which Charlie is prepared to meet in kind. What he isn't prepared for is a path that will eventually lead him back to what he thought no longer existed - his own humanity - though the toll may turn out to be his life.
 

Related Links

The Negro-Cons’ Deal with the Devil: Honorary White Status in Return for Abandoning Fellow Blacks by Lloyd Williams
In reaction to John Ridley's article in December’s Esquire Magazine; Kam Williams, shares his thoughts:
http://aalbc.com/reviews/thenegro-cons.htm

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