African-American Issues

Blogger Kristen Howerton talks about how raising two white biological daughters and two black adopted sons helped her understand white privilege. Her new memoir is Rage Against the Minivan.

Ewing's 1919 looks back on a century-old riot in Chicago, set off after a black teen drowned while being stoned by white people. She says the systemic racism that plagued the U.S. then still exists.

Jamiles Lartey discusses policing in America. He is a staff writer for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system. He previously reported on criminal justice, race and policing for The Guardian, where he was part of a team that created an online database tracking police violence in 2015 and 2016.

The killing of George Floyd has inspired protests across the U.S. and around the world, with crowds evoking the names of other black men and women who have died in police custody — including Freddie Gray. In 2015, Gray was arrested in Baltimore, and put in a police van — shackled but with no seatbelt. At the end of what was later termed a "rough ride," Gray was unconscious and his neck was broken. He died a week later.

At 15, Eric Adams was beaten by police. He later joined the force and worked to reform NYC policing by co-founding 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. He retired from the force after 22 years.

James McBride is best known for his memoir, The Color of Water, about being the son of an African American father and a white mother. His new novel, Deacon King Kong, takes place in 1969, in a Brooklyn housing project, similar to the one he grew up in., and involves the wide consequences of a shooting.

Bryan Stevenson has fought for racial justice within the justice system for over 20 years. His memoir Just Mercy has been adapted into a new film. Now Stevenson wants the U.S. to reckon with its racist past.

This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. The Nobel Prize winner, who died in 2019, spoke about aging and regret in this 2015 interview.

Locke says her new novel "was about place before it was about a character." The story follows a black ranger who patrols East Texas searching for the missing son of an Aryan Brotherhood leader.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner talks how the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments relate to current debates about voting rights, mass incarceration and reparations for slavery.

The Nobel laureate died Monday at 88. Terry Gross talked with Morrison in 1987 after she wrote Beloved, in 1992 after she authored Jazz and in 2015 when she published God Help the Child.

At the height of America's Jim Crow era, Taylor broke barriers by becoming the country's fastest and most famous cyclist. Michael Kranish tells his story in the new book, The World's Fastest Man.

Singleton, who died April 29, spoke to Fresh Air in 1991 about his semi-autobiographical movie, which centered on kids growing up surrounded by drug addiction and gang violence in South Central L.A.

Gates says white supremacy was born in the years after the Civil War, as white Southerners looked for ways to roll back the newly acquired rights of African-Americans. His new book is Stony the Road.

Filmmaker Yoruba Richen's documentary, The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, tells the story of the manual that helped African-Americans find safe places to stay, eat, shop and do business on the road.

Historian David Blight's new biography describes Douglass' escape from slavery, his passionate leadership in the abolitionist movement and his gift as a writer and orator.

Edugyan's latest novel, Washington Black, tells the story of a boy who escapes slavery and embarks on a voyage of scientific discovery. It has been shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize.