Ten Stars: The African American Journey of Gary Cooper--Marine General, Diplomat, Businessman, and Politician

Ten Stars is a nonfiction narrative--part biography, part oral history--of the life story of Gary Cooper, an African American born in the depths of Jim Crow to an Alabama family that challenged the rule of segregation. The Cooper extended family, described in interludes at points within the book, has made a national mark in politics, arts, education, health care, and the military. Graduating from the University of Notre Dame in 1958 as one of three African Americans in a class of 1,500, Cooper went on to become the U.S. Marines' first black commander of a combat infantry company in Vietnam. He later became the Corps' first black general from Infantry, an Alabama state legislator and governor's cabinet official, an Air Force civilian four-star who promoted the Tuskegee Airmen, and the first black U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica.


About the Author
KENDAL WEAVER was born in New Orleans and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, graduating from Birmingham-Southern College in 1966. A journalist, he worked for the Birmingham Post-Herald before joining the Associated Press (AP) staff in Montgomery in 1971. He became the AP correspondent in Mobile in 1976, returning to Montgomery three years later to cover politics and state government as the AP's statehouse correspondent. He became state news editor for the AP in Alabama in 2004. He has written book reviews for AP since retiring in 2011. He and his wife Penny live in Montgomery.