African American issues

Reid's new book, Medgar and Myrlie, tells the stories of the civil rights leader from Mississippi and his wife, who became a civil rights activist after Medgar's 1963 assassination.

Journalist Antonia Hylton has written a new book, "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum". And in it, Hylton traces one of the last segregated asylums in the nation - Crownsville Hospital in Maryland, built in 1911 from the ground up by 12 Black men who would later become patients there, some spending their entire lives in the hospital.

Actor Courtney B. Vance and psychologist Dr. Robin Smith co-authored the book "The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying Their Pain And Reclaiming Their Power."

Historian Tanisha Ford shares the untold story of Mollie Moon, known as one of the most influential women of the civil rights era in her new book "Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind The Civil Rights Movement".

In Black Folk, Blair Kelley portrays generations of Black workers — Pullman porters, domestic laborers, USPS employees, COVID-19 essential workers — who have contributed to the nation's prosperity.

Imani Perry says the South can be seen as an "origin point" for the way the nation operates. Her book South to America traces the steps of an enslaved ancestor. Originally broadcast Jan. 25, 2022.

In her new book, By Hands Now Known, Margaret Burnham reports on little-known cases of racial violence in the Jim Crow era, including crimes that went unreported and murderers who were never punished.

Author Linda Villarosa has been writing about the racial disparities in health outcomes for decades and recently covered the topic for the New York Times' 1619 Project. She says that while she used to think poverty was to blame for Black Americans' health problems, she's now convinced that bias in the health care system and the "weathering" affect of living in a racist society are taking a serious toll on African Americans.

Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa reconstruct the course of his life in His Name is George Floyd.

In Civil Rights Queen, author Tomiko Brown-Nagin profiles Motley, a Black woman who wrote the original complaint in Brown v. The Board of Education and was on Martin Luther King's legal team.