Bessie’s Prayer is a vivid and wondrous memoir of love for family, faith, and adventure by African American Catholic author Walter D. Braud. From the Great Black Migration and life in Chicago to a triumphant law career and Chief Judgeship in the heart of the Midwest. Walter offers a memoir of gratitude, joy, and celebration of the enduring power and love of family. He credits his remarkable mother, Bessie, and her very specific prayers for him, which he knows made all the difference in his life. His story begins during the era of the first great migration from the US South by so many Black individuals and families like his own grandparents who each sought greater opportunities in the North.

Never feeling “poor” despite the circumstances of his childhood on the South Side of Chicago, he was inspired by his family heritage of schoolteachers, musicians, and an uncle who was a superstar baseball player. Though this child prodigy and natural performer did not achieve the particular “first” his family envisioned for him as the first Negro opera tenor to perform in Carnegie Hall, he blazed his own series of firsts in his quest to live up to his mother’s goals for him—to put God and family above all things, pursue worthwhile endeavors, and help others before you help yourself. Walter will be the first to say that he fell way short on too many occasions. “But I gave it my best shot every day of my life. No regrets!”