Clinton Cox

Clinton Cox is the author of several highly-acclaimed books for young readers, including three on fascinating yet little-known aspects of African American military history: Come All You Brave Soldiers: Blacks in the Revolutionary War; Forgotten Heroes: The Story of the Buffalo Soldiers; and Undying Glory: The Story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment.

He first became interested in writing after hearing his father and other black veterans describe their combat experiences during World War II. Knowing that these experiences and those of black soldiers throughout this country's history were largely ignored in books, movies, and classrooms, he became determined to write about their experiences.

Clinton Cox graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1970 and began working as a reporter in New York City. In the next few years he was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and, while writing magazine articles for the New York Daily News Sunday Magazine, won the prestigious Page One Award for Best Local Reporting in a Magazine from the Newspaper Guild of New York.

His first book, Undying Glory, was published by Scholastic in 1991 and was chosen as a CBS/CSS Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. The book told about the all-black "Glory" regiment in the Civil War. One reviewer said the battle scenes rivalled "any I have read in either fiction or non-fiction."

Undying Glory and the other books met with an enthusiastic response from both young people and adults, but there was a special hunger among the young for knowledge about the past.

"I hope my writing will open at least a few eyes to the truth about the history of this country," he says. "It is a history to which all of us--whatever race, religion, gender, or nationality we are--have contributed. I write because I'd like to see children and everyone else learn about the true history so many of them don't even know exists."