Trumpet to the World — Mark Harris

First published in 1946, Trumpet to the World can be seen as a landmark novel, rare for its profound rendering of a black man's experience in Jim Crow America and prophetic of the social changes to come in the next decade. Its protagonist, Willie Jim, could have been brutalized by his family's hard existence in Georgia, but he heads out early; could have been thoroughly demoralized by bigotry and discrimination in a hundred forms, but he learns to read and write and thinks for himself; could have been emotionally unfulfilled, but he learns to love in the midst of hate. After his marriage to a white woman, Willie Jim, caught up in the maelstrom of World War II, is sent to an army camp in the South, where his duty includes teaching English to other soldiers. A tragic event there compromises his future at the very moment a book he has written trumpets to the world his dream of social justice and universal brotherhood.