Though the 2008 presidential election campaign serves to remind all of us that race remains a potent issue in American life, it’s important to realize just how far we’ve come as a nation in a few short decades. Back in the late 1960s, the riots and violence stemming from simmering racial inequities threatened to forever rend American society. And it was at that moment that two young men—one white, one black—took to stages across the country and helped America confront its racial divide … by laughing at it.
The story of America’s first and only interracial comedy team, Tim and Tom presents that turbulent era through the eyes of Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen, two young men who trekked from nightclub to nightclub just looking for a laugh—and hoping to make it big. As they delivered frank (and funny) jokes about race, they met with skepticism, resistance, and even violence, and though they won over audiences night after night, they eventually came to realize that they were simply ahead of their time.
An unforgettable mix of showbiz and social change, humor and history, Tim and Tom resurrects a lost chapter in American comedy.
Read the press release.
Also read an excerpt from the book.