High Price for Freedom

Clyde W. Ford is the author of fifteen works of fiction and nonfiction, and is a psychotherapist, an accomplished mythologist, and a sought-after public speaker. In 2006, Ford received the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award in African American fiction. In 2019, he was named a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in African American nonfiction. In 2021, Clyde received the prestigious Washington Center for the Book Award, the Nautilus Book Award in Social Justice, and was a finalist for the Goddard-Russo Prize in Social Justice for Think Black. Clyde was honored as a "Literary Lion" by the King County Library System in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2019. He was voted "Best Writer of Bellingham, Washington" in 2006 and 2007 by readers of Cascadia Weekly and received the 2007 Bellingham Mayor's Arts Award in Literature. Ford is currently a speaker for Humanities Washington, an affiliate of the NEA, where he presents a program entitled, "Technology, Race and Social Justice," around the state. He is also the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library Publishing Project at HarperCollins. Clyde has participated in hundreds of media interviews and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, New Dimensions Radio, and NPR. He lives in Bellingham, Washington, where he founded the city’s annual Martin Luther King Day commemoration in 1991, and enjoys walking the mountains and cruising the waters of the Pacific Northwest.

A gifted and erudite storyteller, Ford illuminates connections running through the centuries until the “Black Freedom Struggle,” as he prefers to call what is better known as the Civil Rights Movement—the genius, courage, and strength of an unjustly oppressed people with an acute awareness of the world around them and a hunger to make things right...A thought-provoking chronicle that speaks to our times. — Kirkus Reviews“In his engaging and robust retelling of this vital part of African American history, Ford reminds us that history is alive and dynamic… Whether he is amplifying the voices of lesser-known historical figures or he is disclosing lesser-known aspects of the lives and works of more well-known figures, Ford has added informative and enlightening strands to the tapestry of African American history. … A High Price for Freedom is a bridge from the past to the present, cataclysmic moment. It is an existential space wherein ancestral voices commune with contemporary humanity." — Deborah G. Plant, author of Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Justice For All“A High Price for Freedom bravely excavates untold history that is not only important to the Black Freedom Struggle, but to American history at large.”  — Susana Morris, Author of Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler