“Even after dark, if you are quiet and attentive, you can hear a Killdeer far off. Sandbars, mud flats and grazed fields are where you find them. They are commonplace. So much so, that you might miss them if not for the unique sound they make as they fly overhead, or dart back and forth on the ground, as if wondering which way to go next. So it is with Michael Cotter’s stories. They are like a comfortable pair of slippers. Not flashy at all, but each time you put them on and walk in them, you are so glad you did. They appear so ordinary, but the way they wrap around your soul surprises you. And like slippers you thought you’d never buy, Michael’s stories surprise you. Even though they are not flashy, energetic or dramatic in ways we have come to expect in this digital age, they are grounded in universal truths, with timeless characters. They provide us with a sense of memory, wisdom and peace that celebrates the human spirit, and revels in the common man, woman, boy and girl that is in us all. When Michael tells his stories, it’s as if time stands still. We are reminded of who we really are….down deep….after the television is turned off, the radio is silenced, and we have put our egos on the shelf to rest a spell.” 
 
 --Rex Ellis, Director of Museum programs, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Winner, 2006 Illinois State Historical Society Book Award Certificate of Excellence
Recipient, 2007 Hyde Park Historical Society Paul Cornell Award

Sixty years ago, when Truman Gibson reported for duty at the War Department, Washington, D.C. was a southern city in its unbending segregation as well as in its steamy summers. Gibson had no illusions, but as someone who'd enjoyed the best of the vibrant black culture of prewar America, he was shocked to find the worst of the Jim Crow South in the nation's capital. What Gibson accomplished as an advocate for African American soldiers-first as a lawyer working for the Secretary of War, then as a member of President Truman's "Black Cabinet"--is a large part of the history of the struggle for civil rights in the American military; and it is a compelling part of the story that Gibson tells in this book, a memoir of a life spent making a difference in the world one step at a time.
A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Gibson took his fight for racial justice to the corridors of powers, arguing against restrictive real estate covenants before the U.S. Supreme Court, opposing such iconic figures as Generals Dwight Eisenhower and George C. Marshall in campaigning for the integration of the armed forces, and challenging white control of professional sports by creating a boxing promotion empire that made television history. A firsthand account of the nitty-gritty of twentieth-century race relations in the worlds of law, the military, sports, and entertainment, Gibson's memoir is also an engaging recollection of encounters with the likes of Thurgood Marshall, W. E. B. DuBois, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Patton, Jackie Robinson, and Joe Louis, among others. As a historical record and as an intimate look at a bygone era with all its charms and hardships, the book is an essential chapter in our nation's story.