Silent Thunder: Breaking Through Cultural, Racial, and Class Barriers in Motorsports

Silent Thunder: Breaking Through Cultural, Racial, and Class Barriers in Motorsports (2004) is the autobiography of African-American motorsports pioneer Leonard W. Miller. It is a rare look inside an African-American man’s motor-racing experience from post-World War II into the early 1990s. Only two other auto books delve into this perspective.

Origin

The author's son, Leonard T. Miller, encouraged his father to write his motor-racing memoirs in 1995, after concluding a sponsorship presentation to a Fortune 500 corporation. The presentation underscored the total lack of awareness in mainstream and corporate America of African-American auto-racing history and its marketing value.

In the winter of 1998, Leonard W. Miller began writing the manuscript; he completed it by that summer. After attending a race team test session in 1999 at Summit Point Raceway in Summit Point, West Virginia, Miller met Steve Lanier, president of American World Services, LLC, and Tracey Neale, at the time a news anchor with Fox Broadcasting Company's affiliate in Washington, D.C., who referred him to London-based editor Ethan Casey.

A few weeks later, Miller and his son met Casey at Lanier’s office in Washington and handed him the manuscript. Casey edited the manuscript in England and Pakistan over a six-month period and crafted a proposal to sell it to U.S. publishers. Miller received responses from a number of publishers.