Synopses & Reviews
Starting a NASCAR team is hard work. Starting a NASCAR team as an African American is even harder. These are just a few of the lessons learned by Leonard T. Miller during his decade and a half of running an auto racing program. Fueled by more than the desire to win, Miller made it his goal to create opportunities for black drivers in the vastly white, Southern world of NASCAR. Racing While Black chronicles the travails of selling marketing plans to skeptics and scraping by on the thinnest of budgets, as well as the triumphs of speeding to victory and changing the way racing fans view skin color. With his father—former drag racer and longtime team owner Leonard W. Miller—along for the ride, Miller journeys from the short tracks of the Carolinas to the boardrooms of the "Big Three" automakers to find out that his toughest race may be winning over the human race.
Review
"We discover in Leonard T. Miller's moving memoir, Racing While Black, that socially, the Millers were notches above the other drivers... Although Miller and his father were anomalies, they loved stock cars as much as the next good ol' boy. "Auto racing is in my blood," writes Miller, who graduated from Morehouse College and is a commercial airline pilot. "I was drawn to the ear-piercing clamor, the cottony trains of exhaust, and the smell of rubber being singed by the asphalt."...I loved the overall story. Despite it all, Miller has written a generous book."Washington Post
"... There's one major difference between NASCAR and the rest of America’s pastimes: a startling lack of racial diversity. Leonard T. Miller’s book explains why...Miller and Simon give you a firsthand account of all the wins and losses that come with creating a racing team, along with the extreme prejudices that minorities must overcome just to make it to the track."The Complex
"A sequel to the groundbreaking memoir Silent Thunder that tells the story of how his family of racing car professionals rose to prominence in a virtually all-white sport."Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
The story of a pioneering African American NASCAR team fighting to open up the sport.
About the Author
LEONARD T. MILLER is a second-generation African-American auto racing team owner, the president of Miller Racing Group, Inc, and a twenty-one-year veteran commercial airline pilot. His dad, Leonard W. Miller, entered a team in the 1972 Indianapolis 500 and is in the Black Athletes Hall of Fame.
ANDREW SIMON is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, New York. For over a decade he has covered music, sports, and pop culture for Rolling Stone Press, VIBE, Complex, and ESPN Magazine.