As the country gears up for the midterm elections, Into America is traveling to different HBCUs across the South for a special series called, “The Power of the Black Vote.” We’re talking to young Black voters about how they’re shaping America, and about the issues that matter to them the most. This week, we travel to Durham’s North Carolina Central University to discuss how the student debt crisis is affecting Black students’ lives and their plans for the future. As the cost of higher education ...
Sep 22, 2022•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the next few months, as the country gears up for the midterm elections, Into America is traveling to different HBCUs across the South for a special series called, “The Power of the Black Vote” to talk to young Black voters about the power of the Black vote in shaping America, and the issues that matter to them the most. To jump-start our series, we travel to Texas Southern University. The state of Texas has been the central battleground over how race and history are taught in schools. Govern...
Sep 15, 2022•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last month a new charter school opened on San Antonio’s East Side. Essence Preparatory Public School was founded with a specific mission: to serve the Black and brown children that the public school system was consistently failing, developing those children into leaders for their community. But as Essence Prep made its way throughTexas’s charter approval process, they were drawn into the state’s battle over how race and history is taught in public schools. The school was even forced to update th...
Sep 08, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Family legacy is a recurring theme here at Into America. We’ve spoken with the great-grandson of Civil War hero and Reconstruction-era politician Robert Smalls, the grandson of the ground-breaking historian and archivist Arturo Schomburg, and the son of Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey . But when you are the daughters of some of the most famous men of the 20th century, that legacy comes with even higher stakes. Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, and Dr. Bernice King, the daughter of ...
Sep 01, 2022•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the spirit of summer family reunions, we’re revisiting our episode “ Black Joy in the Summertime ” -- a conversation with William Pickens III, who grew up spending the summers in Sag Harbor Hills , one of the three small communities on Long Island, New York nicknamed the Black Hamptons. Mr. Pickens, who passed away in September 2021, talked to Trymaine Lee about the traditions and legacy of summering while Black, and the importance of a place where Black families could be themselves. (Origina...
Aug 25, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast The last time writer Damon Young was on Into America was back in the summer of 2020. He spoke about his New York Times op-ed, “Yeah, Let’s Not Talk About Race––Unless You Pay Me” where he talked about the awkward and sometimes inappropriate questions he was often asked about race. Well, now he is getting paid with his new advice column, “Ask Damon,” in the Washington Post where readers can ask him anything and everything. Damon, who is the author of the book “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blac...
Aug 18, 2022•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast As climate change fuels an increase in natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, and extreme heatwaves, the threat is not evenly distributed. Black Americans are more likely to live in areas that are more flood-prone , hotter , and have worse air quality. They’re also less likely to have access to life-saving measures like air conditioning. And even though President Joe Biden’s new $369 billion climate agenda has passed the senate after Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema fina...
Aug 11, 2022•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Black Americans have long been one of the most loyal voting blocs within the Democratic Party. And Historically Black Colleges and Universities have often served as an important site for Democratic campaign outreach. As the November 2022 midterm elections approach, what is this new generation of young, Black voters looking for in their elected officials and what are the issues that matter most to them? This week, Into America’s Trymaine Lee travels to Atlanta, Georgia to talk with students and r...
Aug 04, 2022•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Incarcerated women have largely been left out of the conversation when it comes to abortion rights, but they are often the one who suffer the most. Prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade pregnant people behind bars already faced limited access to abortions. And it’s Black women who bear the brunt of mass incarceration: they are imprisoned at almost twice the rate of white women. This week, Into America looks at what it means to be pregnant behind bars. We speak with Pamela Winn who founded Rest...
Jul 28, 2022•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tops Friendly Market has now re-opened in East Buffalo, two months after a white supremacist walked into the supermarket with guns blazing. Motivated by previous racist attacks and the false and insidious“ great replacement theory ,” the shooter live-streamed his killing spree, during which he took the lives of ten members of Buffalo’s Black community. The victims included parents, the elderly, a beloved community activist, and the security guard who died shooting back. Tops closed down for mont...
Jul 21, 2022•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lance Stevens was standing outside his home in his calm Indianapolis neighborhood with his mother, Kim Tillman, as she dropped off the two young grandkids from a weekend at her house, when a stranger with a gun changed their lives in an instant. Lance was shot in the leg and another bullet grazed the side of his head, while his mother received the brunt of the gunfire: she was shot in the chest and armpit, and her arm and cheekbone were shattered. After decades of decline, gun violence has spike...
Jul 14, 2022•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s a prevailing narrative within our society when it comes to Black men, one which was spelled out in detail more than fifty years ago, but which continues to sit right at home in our country’s family of stereotypes about Blackness. The narrative goes that Black men don’t stick around to parent the children we father. Shaka Senghor is out to change that narrative. His most recent book, Letters to the Sons of Society , is written as a collection of letters to his own two sons, born twenty ye...
Jul 07, 2022•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Freaknik in many ways is what Woodstock was for white people,” explains Dr. Maurice Hobson. Hobson is an historian at Georgia State University and former Freaknik attendee. Freaknik was a legendary street party that started in Atlanta back in the early 80s. For more than 15 years, young Black people from all around the country flooded the parks and streets of Atlanta every third weekend in April. There was dancing in the middle of the streets, step shows, and concerts with rap stars like Outkas...
Jun 30, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Selma, Alabama was at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. It was here in 1965 that Black protesters were chased and beaten during a march that would become known as Bloody Sunday . And today, that fight for Black liberation continues in Selma with Quentin Bell, the executive director of the Knights and Orchids Society , a nonprofit group that supports Black queer people who are facing housing insecurity, healthcare needs, and discrimination . Quentin has been an LGBTQ+ advocate for more than...
Jun 23, 2022•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast More than ten years ago , Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teen, was fatally shot in a gated neighborhood in Florida while on his way back to their home from a local convenience store. Martin's death -- and his shooter's acquittal -- would go on to spark a new generation of protests and global attention on police and citizen violence against Black people. In the wake of this renewed energy around anti-Black racism, a coalition of racial justice organizations like The Black Lives Matter Network, ...
Jun 16, 2022•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Before he was Big Daddy Kane, the legendary MC who broke out big in the late 80s, he was just Antonio Hardy, the kid from Brooklyn who heard something new coming out of the turntables at the block party. It was the sound of hip-hop coming of age, and Kane was coming up with it. Soon, he’d be writing his own rhymes and traveling to other boroughs to battle their best MCs. Big Daddy Kane would go on to become one of the most versatile rappers of his day, with hits like “ Ain’t No Half-Steppin ,’” ...
Jun 09, 2022•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast What can we do when the weight of the world becomes too heavy? Amid a gun violence epidemic that’s ravaging communities across the US, attacks on American history curriculums in classrooms, and failures from elected officials to protect voting and abortion rights , American democracy is in crisis. But Michael McBride , a pastor and community organizer, is showing us what a practice of persistence during times of despair can look like. With more than 20 years in ministry, McBride bridges the chur...
Jun 02, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Where does the video of George Floyd’s murder fit into the long history of the push for racial justice? Journalist and professor Marc Lamont Hill has just released a new book, co-authored with historian Todd Brewster . Titled Seen & Unseen , the work explores the ways in which technology and visual media have shaped our understanding of race in the past and how they are being used as tools in the fight for racial justice today. The impetus for Hill and Brewster’s book was the murder of George Fl...
May 26, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Saturday, May 14, a white 18-year-old drove to a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y., and killed ten people in a racist attack. The gunman was alone, and reporting has revealed that he allegedly posted a manifesto with racist theories and his plans to kill Black people online. Law enforcement officials and the media often describe these kinds of perpetrator as lone wolves. But the work of white supremacy is never lonely. It’s propagated by social media, cable television pundi...
May 19, 2022•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s been almost ten years since the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing Trayvon Martin, sparked the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2013. A year later, the police killing of Michael Brown turned the hashtag into a movement. Then in 2020, the world witnessed the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and Black Lives Matter exploded into a global phenomenon. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest, and as activists took center stage, people donated...
May 12, 2022•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week marks the 30th anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots , also known as the LA Uprising. Before the uprising, tensions in South L.A. were at an all-time high from years of untamed police abuse, gang violence, and strained relations between the Black and Korean American communities. In 1991, a Black teenager named Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by Korean storekeeper Soon Ja Du after she accused Harlins of stealing a bottle of juice. Around the same time, the Black community was al...
May 05, 2022•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast According to a draft Supreme Court opinion obtained by Politico , the Supreme Court stands poised to overturn Roe v. Wade during its next session. If this happens, it’s estimated as many as 23 states will enact some type of abortion ban, some of which will go into effect almost immediately . And Black people could be hardest hit. Black women seek abortions at a higher rate than any other group. And that, coupled with the knowledge that infant and maternal mortality rates are higher for Black peo...
May 04, 2022•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Harvard University is confronting its ties to slavery in a new way. In a sweeping report published this week, the university detailed how the school profited from slavery and acknowledged that more than 70 people were enslaved by Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff between 1636 and 1783 when the state of Massachusetts outlawed the practice. Last year, Into America explored whether the school understood the nuances of Blackness within its student body, because even though Harvard is one of the Bl...
Apr 29, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jean-Michel Basquiat was an iconic American artist who rose to fame in the downtown New York City cultural scene of the late 1970s and early 80s. By 18-years-old, Basquiat had already begun spray-painting tantalizing texts on the walls of lower Manhattan under the pseudonym SAMO. In the years to come, Basquiat would transition from street tagger to gallery artist, taking the world by storm. Today, Basquiat’s legacy looms over us, larger than ever. His images and symbols grace Uniqlo t-shirts and...
Apr 28, 2022•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Down on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, there is a small, close-knit Black community named Pointe à La Hache. There, oyster harvesting is a culture and a heritage that has been passed down for generations. But decades of storms, natural disasters, oil spills, and racist policies have threatened this way of life. Now, the state’s coastal restoration plans could end it. According to experts, Louisiana loses more than a football field of its jagged coastline every 100 minutes. This leaves coastal communiti...
Apr 21, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast The racial wealth gap in this country between Black and white Americans is vast. Centuries of violent theft and racist policies mean that white families have, on average, eight times the wealth of Black families. But a sizeable number of people, like Lamar Wilson , the founder of Black Bitcoin Billionaires , say there’s a new way to help close this gap: cryptocurrency. There are even cryptocurrencies made by Black people to benefit the Black community, like Guapcoin , run by technologist Tavonia...
Apr 14, 2022•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Emmett Till’s lynching is credited as the spark that set off the Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, the 14-year-old boy was visiting family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped and murdered for whistling at a white woman. Days later his bloated body was dragged out of the Tallahatchie River and sent home to his mother, Mamie Till Mobley , in Chicago. When pictures of his mutilated face were published around the country, it shocked the national consciousness, bringing people off the sideline s and i...
Apr 07, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast This past weekend’s Oscars ceremony was one for the history books. There was, of course, the smack seen around the world . But beyond the most salacious headline of the night one fact stood out: this was the Blackest Oscars ceremony the world has ever seen. Two of the night’s three hosts – comedian Wanda Sykes and actress Regina Hall – were Black women. All the young people handing the winners their trophies were HBCU students. And for the first time in its history, the show was produced by an a...
Apr 01, 2022•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast During the 2022 Oscars’ ceremony, Will Smith shocked the world. Smith strode onstage and smacked Chris Rock, after the comedian made a joke about Smith’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith. Smith went on to win the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Venus and Serena Williams’s father in King Richard , and later in the night he and Rock reportedly made amends . When Smith was announced as the winner of the Oscar for Best Actor the audience gave him a standing ovation as he approached the stage. ...
Mar 31, 2022•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the better part of a decade Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were one of the most influential couples in pop culture, living their private lives in the public eye. And now that the pair is officially split, they continue to grab headlines . When Kim filed for divorce in February of last year, things at first seemed amicable – in August the couple recreated their wedding on stage at one of Kanye’s concerts, and they continue to share parenting responsibilities for their four children. But Kanye ...
Mar 24, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
