In 2005 the independent African American publishing house, Red Sea Press, published Silent Thunder: Breaking Through Cultural, Racial and Class Barriers in Motorsports by Leonard W. Miller, a groundbreaking memoir that examined the obstacles faced by African Americans in amateur and professional car racing, written by a pioneering black racer and team owner. This month Seven Stories Press is releasing, Racing While Black: How An African American Stock Car Team Made its Mark on NASCAR, by his son Leonard T. Miller (with Andrew Simon), a sequel of sorts to the earlier book that tells the story of how this family of racing car professionals rose to prominence in a virtually all-white sport.

Silent Thunder told the story of Miller Sr., a longtime amateur and professional racer and a member of the Black Athletes Hall of Fame, who entered a black racing team in the 1972 Indianapolis 500, and details the obstacles he faced trying to enter the traditionally southern white world of motorsports racing in the 1960s and 1970s. The new book, Racing While Black, is about his son Leonard T. Miller’s life as a second-generation African American race car team executive and the problems he faced running Miller Racing, a family-owned black motorsports team in the modern era.

Seven Stories publisher Dan Simon said the house was releasing a first printing of 5,000 copies, but said “we hope to go much further than that.” Simon described the book as critical of NASCAR and said it examines the problems Miller faced building a stock car racing team with his father; his struggles securing corporate sponsorships despite his team's successes and the inevitable problems dealing with bigoted fellow-drivers and fans in a traditionally all white sport.

Simon said Red Sea Press publisher Kassahun Checole introduced him to Millers. “Checole thought the new book could be more commercial than Len Sr.’s book and he reached out to me.” Simon brought in a writer, Andrew Simon, previously with Vibe magazine and now with ESPN magazine, to work with Len Jr. on the book. Seven Stories held a reading and signing recently for the book in Philadelphia that was covered by C-SPAN and Miller will be appearing on the Tavis Smiley radio show.

Simon said that the book even has “a surprise ending,” and said the book will provide a much-needed look at one of the few major American sports that seems closed to African Americans. “The Millers did a great deal for blacks in racing sports,” said Simon. “During years in which NASCAR itself wouldn't let black drivers in and even sympathetic black executives at General Motors and other car companies who wanted to support the Miller team would have to do so clandestinely. After a few years the persistence of the Millers posed enough of a threat that you started to see black drivers integrating other teams.”