Finding Booker Wright

Guest: Yvette Johnson, author of “The Song and the Silence” In 1966, a man named Booker Wright went on national television and told the world what it was like to be Black in the segregated south. He looked straight into the camera and explained how it felt to be mistreated by the White customers at the restaurant where he worked. With that television appearance, Booker Wright became an unwitting icon for the Civil Rights movement. There would be devastating consequences for him and his descendants. In 2012, Booker’s granddaughter Yvette Johnson co-produced a documentary about him and about her quest to learn his story. Johnson has now written a memoir about that discovery. It wasn’t until about 10 years ago she knew anything about her grandfather, the racially-divided place he came from, and the impact he had on race relations nationwide.