[1] He also served as a consultant on Ken Burns' documentary films Baseball, Jazz, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, The War, and Muhammad Ali.
He writes on topics as diverse as American literature, the Korean War, African-American culture, Afro-American autobiography, non-fiction prose, baseball, jazz, prizefighting, Motown, Miles Davis, Muhammad Ali and Sammy Davis Jr.[1] In 2024, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
His father, a baker, died when Early was nine months old, leaving his mother, a preschool teacher, to raise him and his two sisters on her own.
During Early's undergraduate years, he was introduced to the writings of Amiri Baraka and later credited the poet and playwright with influencing his own work.
He also spent six months monitoring gang activities through the Crisis Intervention Network, before resuming his course work at Cornell University, where he eventually earned a doctorate in English literature in 1982.