His latest book, Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights, was published in New York, in August 2013 by Simon & Schuster.
Born on October 3, 1955, in Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, Freedman was raised in Highland Park, New Jersey, along with his younger brother and sister.
A paper boy in his youth, Freedman went on to attend the University of Wisconsin–Madison after graduating Highland Park High School in 1973.
[7] After receiving his bachelor's degree in journalism and history in 1977, Freedman went on to work at the now-defunct subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune, the Suburban Trib.
Before publishing his first book, Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students, and Their High School,[8] and gaining his professorship at Columbia University, Freedman was a staff reporter for the Culture section of The New York Times.