Preorders Available for Wallce Terry Biography

In Wallace Terry: A Reporter’s Journey from Selma to Saigon to Bloods, award-winning biographer Ray E. Boomhower tells the story of a journalist who spent his life smashing barriers from childhood in Indiana, to an Ivy League education at Brown, to covering the civil rights movement in the in the Deep South in the 1960s, and finally to what he described as “the biggest story in the world” of his time, the Vietnam War. 

While in Vietnam, he captured the voices and experiences of Black soldiers, using the insights he gained to produce Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans. The book remains a classic reflection of a war that fractured U.S. society and cost the lives of nearly 58,000 Americans.

Before risking his life on the frontlines covering the Vietnam War for Time magazine, Terry became deeply involved in reporting about the civil rights movement of the 1960s in the United States. “It was a story that I passionately cared for because it was going to affect me, my family, my children, and generations of Black people to come,” said Terry. 

Working for the Washington Post, he wrote the first newspaper series about the Nation of Islam, interacting with Malcolm X, who sheltered him from harm when his stories upset some members of the movement. He also grew close to those who sacrificed their lives in the struggle for equality, including Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr., who became godfather to Terry’s eldest son.  

Terry continued to cover the fight for civil rights after moving from the Washington Post to

Time, working as one of the first Black national correspondents to be hired in the overwhelmingly white mainstream media. Making civil rights his focus gave him the opportunity to report on such seminal events as the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, and the Selma to Montgomery marches. 

 

Terry got the opportunity for an overseas assignment in early 1967 when he suggested that the

magazine do a cover article about the contributions being made by Black soldiers fighting in Vietnam. During his two years covering the war, Terry conducted numerous interviews with Black fighting men—soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines—that he later used as the basis for Bloods. He sought with his work to topple the conviction that “white soldiers are invincible and black soldiers are invisible.” Terry faced numerous challenges, including rejections from publishers who believed the public did not want to have anything to do with Vietnam or read about Black veterans from the conflict. Finally published in 1984, Bloods became a bestseller and remains a landmark work of military and oral history.

 

Boomhower has written the first-ever biography of a reporter whose name belongs with the greats in American journalism and an individual who lived a life filled with danger and betrayal, scoops and cover-ups, while immersing himself in events that changed the course of U.S. history.

Preorders for the book, which will be published on October 6, 2026, by High Road Books, an imprint of the University of New Mexico Press, are now being accepted. Click here to preorder.