African-American Issues

From the March on Washington in 1963 up until his assassination in 1968, the FBI engaged in an intense campaign to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and his work. Film director Sam Pollard chronicles those efforts in the new documentary, MLK/FBI.

The Chicago 7 were activists who were charged with conspiring to start a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Jon Wiener's 2006 book, recently reprinted, is Conspiracy in the Streets.

Jerald Walker talks about growing up on Chicago's South Side, raising his two sons in a predominantly white suburb and preventing his essays from turning into clichés about the Black experience.

The James Beard award-winning chef says his flagship restaurant, Red Rooster, became his "haven" during the height of pandemic. Working with José Andrés' World Central Kitchen organization, Samuelsson converted the restaurant to a community kitchen. Over the course of six months, Red Rooster served more than 200,000 meals to first responders and others in need. he talks about that and his new book.

The HBO show uses sci-fi and superheroes to examine American racism. Cord Jefferson wrote the episode in which the main character goes back in time and to relive the trauma of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.

In his book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Peniel Joseph braids together the lives of the two civil rights leaders. He says that King and Malcolm X had "convergent visions" for Black America — but their strategies for how to reach the goal was informed by their different upbringings.

In her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Wilkerson says that acknowledging America's caste system deepens our understanding of what Black people are up against in the U.S.

Lewis, who died July 17, grew up the son of sharecroppers. He later became an associate of Martin Luther King and co-led the 1965 civil rights march in Selma, Ala. Originally broadcast in 2009.

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.