African-American Issues

Michael Arceneaux's new book, I Can't Date Jesus, is a collection of essays about his early years. Beyoncé, he says, taught him a valuable lesson: "Just be yourself and be very good at what you do."

Comic W. Kamau Bell talks about his new comedy special, searching his ancestry, and raising his bi-racial daughters in the Trump era.

Journalist Howard Bryant discusses the history of social protest among African-American athletes. His new book, The Heritage, traces the tradition back to Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and others.

When I was a kid, my mom told me a story about her grandfather: That he got in trouble with some white men down south, and escaped lynching by running to Chicago. That he chose his new last name "Jones," because it was the most common name in the phone book. That, for years, he would sit in his chair facing the door, shotgun on his lap, waiting for them to come for him.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan has been reading some newly reprinted novels from the Harlem Renaissance. She says these novels about American racism hardly feel dated at all.

In 1957, three years after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional, Melba Pattillo Beals was one of nine black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.

Jonathan Olshefski spent 10 years filming Christopher Rainey and his family, who run a recording studio in a working-class African-American section of North Philadelphia. Then their daughter was shot.

Mudbound follows two families — one white and one black — just before, during and after World War II. Rees says her experiences growing up in Nashville, Tenn., in the 1980s informed her new film.

Eric Garner was the 47 year old man who died at the hands of police in 2014 after he was pushed to the ground and put into an illegal choke hold. Garner repeated the words "I can't breath" eleven times before he died. His death was captured on a cell phone and went viral. And latter spurred on the Black Lives Matter movement. Matt Taibbi set out to find out who Garner was, and how he died.

Danielle Allen's memoir centers on her cousin Michael, who was sentenced to a long prison term for carjacking when he was 15. Three years after his release, he was found shot to death in a parked car.

Maureen Corrigan reviews a new biography of Chester Himes, who published his first novel in the 1940s and was hailed as a worthy member of an elite company of black intellectuals and writers like Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Now his literary legacy is largely forgotten. This new biography hopes to change that.

James Forman Jr., son of civil rights activists, says that African-American leaders seeking to combat drugs and crime often supported policies that disproportionately targeted the black community.

Author Sheryll Cashin's talks about the Loving v. Virginia ruling, which overturned state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Cashin grew up the child of civil rights activists in Huntsville, Ala

Sasheer Zamata has been a cast member of Saturday Night Live since 2014. Now she has new stand up special titled Pizza Mind.

Author Mat Johnson reflects on how the election of Barack Obama, made him feel like he belonged in America for the first time.

Sixty-three years after the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, many schools across the country either remain segregated or have re-segregated. Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that when it comes to school segregation, separate is never truly equal.