December 1, 2025 Book Review Breakfast: "All Blood Runs Red: The Legendary Life of Eugene Bullard—Boxer, Pilot, Soldier, Spy," by Tom Clavin and Phil Keith

Dana King, journalist and sculptor, will review All Blood Runs Red: The Legendary Life of Eugene Bullard—Boxer, Pilot, Soldier, Spy, by Tom Clavin and Phil Keith.

Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the 20^th century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of eleven to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African-American fighter pilot in history. All Blood Runs Red is the inspiring untold story of an American hero, a thought-provoking chronicle of the 20^th century and a portrait of a man who came from nothing and by his own courage, determination, gumption, intelligence and luck forged a legendary life.

Dana King is a classical figurative sculptor who creates public monuments of Black Bodies in Bronze.  

Across countless generations African elders and their descendants have communicated culture, history, and wisdom through storytelling. Dana King continues that tradition in bronze, resurrecting love, and truth from America’s buried past. Intense research shapes such memories empowering King to create art that invites people to understand American history in a connected and compelling way.

King prefers sculptures because they inhabit space and space is power. She believes sculpture provides an opportunity to shape culturally significant memories that determine how African descendants are publicly held and remembered.

King creates sculptures of people whose stories are not as well-known as they should be. For example:  Civil Rights icon, Ella Baker for the Ohio State University, Toni Stone, the first woman to play professional baseball with and against men for the SF Giants, Anti-lynching advocate, Ida B. Wells for Columbia University, The Honorable Bryron Rumford who wrote the Fair Housing Act, Dr. Huey Newton, Co-Founder and Theoretician of the Black Panther Party, Dr. Joseph Gier, Engineer, Inventor and first Black tenured professor in the University of California system. She also created a 3-sculpture monument for the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama in addition to sculptures in New Haven, Ct., Oakland, Ca and soon in Ketchum, Id.

King was awarded the Artadia Award in 2021 and was a 2021-22 California Art Council Fellow. She is a former 3-term trustee at the Oakland Museum of California. King also traveled the world as a broadcast journalist for 25 years and garnered 5 Emmy, 2 Edward R. Murrow and 2 Gracie Awards, mainly for her international reporting.

All Book Review Breakfasts begin at 9:30 am in the

Richardson Center of Indian River State College, 6155 College Lane, Vero Beach.

Book Review Breakfasts are free and open to the public. You are encouraged to bring new or gently used children’s books to stock the Little Free Libraries that we support.