Inner cities
Interrupting Violence With The Message 'Don't Shoot'
Criminologist David M. Kennedy's strategy for reducing gang violence has dramatically reduced youth homicide rates nationwide. In his new memoir, Don't Shoot, Kennedy outlines his community meetings and interventions have worked to curb youth violence in more than 70 cities.
Richard Price Details a Gritty 'Lush Life'
Novelist and screenwriter Richard Price discusses his new novel, Lush Life, about the repercussions of a shooting on the Lower East side. Price has written extensively about the realities of inner city life; he is a writer for HBO's The Wire which ends a five-year run on Sunday.
Oscar Host Chris Rock
Rock will host the 2005 Academy Awards, airing Sunday. The comedian spent time on the cast of Saturday Night Live and In Living Color, and his comedy TV specials include last year's Chris Rock: Never Scared and Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker. This interview was originally broadcast on Feb. 6, 1997.
Fresh Air Comedy Week: Chris Rock on Rolling with the New.
Comedian Chris Rock. He got his start in show business performing stand-up routines in Manhattan. He spent three years on Saturday Night Live and appeared in a few films including the recent Beverly Hills Ninja. He also had a comedy and talk-show series, "The Chris Rock Show" on HBO. (REBROADCAST from 2/6/97)
Bearing Witness to Ambitious Inner City Athletes.
From the new movie documentary "Hoop Dreams" (Fine Line Features), young basketball player Arthur Agee and film director Steve James The film traces the lives of Agee and his friend William Gates for five years as they try to follow their dreams of rising from inner city Chicago to play in the NBA. James is the director, producer and co-editor of the film. (REBROADCAST from 10/31/94). (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)
Bearing Witness to Ambitious Inner City Athletes
From the new movie documentary "Hoop Dreams," young basketball player Arthur Agee and film director Steve James. The movie traces the lives of Agee and his friend William Gates for five years as they try to follow their dreams of rising from inner city Chicago to play in the NBA. James is the director, producer and co-editor of the film.
"Menace II Society" Is a Remarkable Debut Film About L.A. Gang Life
Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews the new movie by first-time directors, the Hughes Brothers.
The Grim State of American Inner Cities
Journalist Alex Kotlowitz won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for a series of articles he wrote for the Wall Street Journal chronicling the lives of two children in a housing project in Chicago. He's expanded those articles into the new book, "There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up In the Other America."
Journalist and Screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper
Cooper wrote the screenplay for the new movie, "New Jack City," and coined the term, "new jack swing," that inspired the movie's title. Cooper's reporting appears in The Village Voice and Spin.
White Reactions Against the Great Migration
Journalist Nicholas Lemann's new book, "The Promised Land," is an account of the American black migration; between the early 1940s and the late 1960s more than five million blacks left the Deep South and headed north, looking for a better life.