In 2015, a police officer shot and killed LaKeith Smith’s friend, A’Donte Washington, during a burglary gone wrong. But years later, LaKeith is the one behind bars for murder. LaKeith was originally given a sentence of 65-years, after beingc onvicted of burglary, theft, and something called felony murder. In certain criminal cases, the felony murder rule allows a person to be charged with murder even if they’re not the one who did the killing. Experts say it’s a legal charge that disproportionat...
Apr 06, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast When toxic chemical spill from a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio last month led to health concerns in the area, the disaster attracted widespread media coverage, action from Environmental Protection Agency, and a bipartisan push to enact stricter regulations on rail safety. Yet for residents of so-called "sacrifice zones," this kind of environmental disaster is everyday life. These communities, which are disproportionately Black, are close to industrial plants that emit carcinogens and ...
Mar 30, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Retired Florida professor Marvin Dunn has been dismayed at recent efforts to battle so-called critical race theory and limit the way educators can talk about race. Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the Stop WOKE Act, which mandated that public schools teach race in a manner where students would not “feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part.” Like many educators, Dr. Dunn feared this would create an environ...
Mar 23, 2023•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Louisville Metro Police Department has engaged in sweeping civil rights abuses against Black people, women, and people with disabilities, according to newly released findings from a Department of Justice investigation. “Shortly after we opened the investigation, an LMPD leader told the department Breonna Taylor was a symptom of problems that we have had for years,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference last week. “The Justice Department's findings in the report that we ...
Mar 16, 2023•41 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. Today, Basquiat’s legacy looms over us, larger than ever. His images and symbols grace Uniqlo t-shirts and Tiffany & Co jewelry campaigns. In 2017, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s powerful 1982 painting of a skull was purchased for $110.5 million , becoming the sixth most expensive work ever sold at auction. But has Basquiat’s pop cultural significance eclipsed...
Mar 09, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Trymaine Lee reflects on the direction of hip-hop over the last decade: through the Trump and Biden administrations, the rise of Black Lives Matter, and the spread of COVID-19. He surveys the state of the culture in 2023, 50 years after the birth of the artform; and he looks ahead to what the next 50 years could hold. Plus, guests from our “Street Disciples” series tell us how their lives have been shaped by half a century of politics, power, and the rise of hip-hop. Follow and share the show on...
Mar 02, 2023•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast By the late 90s, rap was the world’s pop music. The money was flowing, creating hip-hop moguls and welcoming in the Bling Era. But as hip-hop went mainstream and gained commercial success, the rap music topping the charts had begun to largely shed its political messaging in favor of music that was mostly about the trappings of success: sex, partying, and money. That is, until pressure mounted and backlash to a Republican government brought politics back to hip-hop once more, leading to the mobil...
Feb 23, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast As hip-hop found its rhythm in the late 80s and early 90s, artists had to grapple with the scars of violence the drug war was causing within the community, using music videos like “Self Destruction” to hold each other accountable, and trying not to unravel in the face of what was happening in the streets. This is also when hip-hop began to expand outside of New York, to Los Angeles, where California’s own policies and structures were shaping the rise of gangsta rap. These movements culminated in...
Feb 16, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast By the 1980s, hip-hop artists were beginning to expand the party culture of hip-hop's early years and think about what they wanted to say with their music. Faced with a city wrecked by economic abandonment and neglect, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released “The Message” in 1982, calling out the conditions head-on: “rats in the front room, roaches in the back, junkies in the alley with a baseball bat.” And to take control of this environment of neglect, young artists began shaping their...
Feb 09, 2023•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hip-hop is a rose that grew from concrete. And there’s no other place it could have grown than the fertile soil of the South Bronx. At the beginning of the 20th Century, urban planning destroyed neighborhoods and led to white flight, and tall high-density towers re-arranged the landscape of the borough. Around the same time, a massive wave of Caribbean immigrants and Black Southerners were migrating to the South Bronx, leading to a convergence of cultures that would light a spark for the birth o...
Feb 02, 2023•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Trayvon Martin’s hoodie was never supposed to end up in an exhibit on Reconstruction at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture . But then the 17-year-old boy was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida, by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain, while carrying nothing but a cell phone, a pack of Skittles, and a can of iced tea. Kidada Williams , a history professor at Wayne State University tells Trymaine Lee that she sees a clear through line between Reconstr...
Jan 26, 2023•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast On June 17, 2015, a white extremist shot and killed nine Black people in the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina as they gathered for a bible study group. This wasn’t the first time Mother Emanuel had been attacked. In the 1820s, white people burned down Mother Emanuel in retaliation over a failed slave rebellion. For years, the congregation was forced to meet in secret. But through all the violence and backlash, the Black congregants relied on their faith, and during Reconst...
Jan 19, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood is one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in America, and at the heart of that was Claiborne Avenue . In the 1960s, construction of the I-10 highway cut through the community. But now, thanks to funding from the recent infrastructure bill , community residents might have the resources to heal. Proposals for the Claiborne Expressway have included everything from tearing down the freeway completely, to taking the federal grant funding and investing it into the commu...
Jan 17, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman asked a group of African Americans in Georgia what they needed most to start their new lives as free people. The answer: land. This led to Sherman’s order that every Black family in the region receive 40 acres , and an Army mule if they liked. It was a promise the government decided not to keep, but where the government failed, the newly freed made their own way. In the second episode of “Reconstructed,” Trymaine Lee visits Promised Land . Founded just a...
Jan 12, 2023•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast In February 2022, Into America launched “Reconstructed,” a series about the legacy of Reconstruction. The story begins in the late 1860s, as the newly freed became citizens under the law and Black men gained the right to vote. Black Americans across the South suddenly had the power to exert control over their own lives. In the face of horrific violence from their white neighbors, Black people voted in liberal governments across the South, elevating hundreds of their own to places of political po...
Jan 05, 2023•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re welcoming in a new year by checking in on a few former guests. Tavonia Evans, founder of the cryptocurrency Guapcoin , gives us the state of her digital economy after the fall of FTX. We also speak with Fragrance Harris Stanfield, a survivor of the Tops shooting in Buffalo , for updates on her perseverance post-tragedy, and talk with one of the families with links to the Tulsa massacre we met in 2021. And we catch up with Akeem Brown, founder of the San Antonio charter school Essence Prep ...
Dec 29, 2022•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Black Christmas music is a genre of its own. From originals like “All I Want for Christmas is You,” to our spin on the so-called classics, these songs have become a staple in Black households. In the spirit of the holiday season, Trymaine sits down with music industry veteran Naima Cochrane to take us on a deep dive into some of the best and most influential Black Christmas songs of all time. We get into Whitney Houston’s take on “Joy to the World,” James Brown’s “Santa Claus Go Straight to the ...
Dec 22, 2022•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast After nearly 3 years and 200 episodes, Into America is having its first mailbag episode! We’ve asked for questions from listeners, former guests, and friends of the show. From moments that Trymaine has never forgotten, to critical feedback from listeners, to the best place in Brooklyn to buy a suit... we get into a little bit of everything. Show host Trymaine Lee and Executive Producer Aisha Turner let listeners peer behind the curtain of how this podcast works, as they talk about their favorite...
Dec 15, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Marsha Coleman-Adebayo heard a rumor that members of her church might be buried under a parking lot for a high-rise apartment building, she couldn’t believe it. This small plot of land in the wealthy, white suburb of Bethesda, Maryland , had once been part of the Black community that flourished here after emancipation, and was now dwindling due to development and gentrification. The land was now worth tens of millions of dollars, and developers were eyeing it for further construction. So Ma...
Dec 08, 2022•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s been just over a month since Elon Musk became CEO of Twitter, capping off a months-long , controversial, $44 billion takeover. The company has drastically changed under Musk, from losing an estimated two-thirds of its staff to layoffs and resignations, to looser content regulations, to reinstating notable banned accounts such as former President Donald Trump . The changes have left many Black users uncertain of their future on the site, and that poses a danger to one of the site’s most vibr...
Dec 01, 2022•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since the advent of powered flight, African Americans have been fighting for a spot in the skies. During World War I Eugene Jacques Bullard made a name for himself as the first African American military pilot. But Bullard flew for the French Foreign Legion – because at the time, the U.S. military refused to train Black pilots. Later, in 1939, the Tuskegee Airmen would go on to win honor and distinction escorting bombers and flying attack missions during WWII, proving the skill and fitness of Bla...
Nov 24, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Marvel’s Black Panther has always been more than a superhero franchise. Since the first film came out in 2018, the characters and their utopian home, the fictional African nation of Wakanda, have become ingrained in popular culture. “Wakanda forever” became more than a line from a movie — it transformed into shorthand for Black pride and excellence. Now, the long-awaited sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever , is once again redefining the genre. Filmed after the death of star Chadwick Boseman ,...
Nov 17, 2022•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast The morning after Election Day, results were still being counted and analyzed from the 2022 midterms . It seemed likely that Republicans would control the House, but without the “red wave” many analysts were predicting. Into America host Trymaine Lee spent Election Day, Tuesday November 8th, in Atlanta, Georgia. He spoke to people who waited in line vote, hoping to make their mark, after Republicans passed new voting restrictions. In that state, voters ultimately decided that incumbent Republica...
Nov 10, 2022•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Midterm elections are critical junctures for Black America, moments in time that have transformed the wellbeing of the community — for better or worse. In 1962, the Democrats’ strong showing helped pave the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Backlash to President Clinton brought the Republican Revolution of 1994, which led to the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. And in 2010, President Obama lost control of Congress, essentially halting major legislative progress for the rest of his ...
Nov 03, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast When someone in the Black community dies, we honor them with vibrant, spiritual homegoings and repasts as a celebration of their life. That’s because honoring someone in death is a reflection of how we loved them in life. This Fall, as the weather gets cooler and calls for introspection, and as some cultures celebrate Day of the Dead and All Souls Day, we’re looking to the Black burial and mourning traditions that buoy us year after year. On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with...
Oct 27, 2022•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Comedy is an art form that consistently provides some of the most insightful social commentary to be found. When the best comics get on stage, they shine a light on the darker, often uncomfortable, parts of our collective psyche, in the process opening a door for discussion. W. Kamau Bell is a comedian who has used his art to highlight our country’s complicated relationship with race. And his CNN series, United Shades of America , follows Bell as he visits communities across the country, explori...
Oct 20, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the final stop of our HBCU tour on The Power of the Black Vote, we travel to Atlanta, home of three of the most prestigious historically Black colleges and universities: Spelman, Morehouse, and Clark Atlanta, to talk with HBCU students about the Black youth vote. Georgia has always played a significant role in the fight for voting rights in this country. And when Stacey Abrams lost her race for governor in 2018, young Black voters who were tired and fed-up began to mobilize on their campuses....
Oct 13, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Despite being the Blackest state in the country, Mississippi has little Black political representation; and the state’s policies have been hostile to its predominately Black capital city of Jackson. But in the face of the state’s political neglect, Black people have never stopped fighting to make their communities stronger. During the Civil Rights Movement, Mississippi was ground zero for activism, with Jackson State at the center. Now, a new generation is drawing on that tradition to look out f...
Oct 06, 2022•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast At one point, Florida’s Apalachee Bay was dominating the seafood industry, but over the years it has experienced a sharp decline from climate change and environmental destruction. When a local oyster farmer took notice, he connected with his friends at the historically Black college, Florida A&M University, for help. FAMU has a long history of environmental stewardship, and leading environmental causes. That’s why this generation of Black students are working on FAMU’s Rattler Moji Project , a s...
Sep 29, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast As a bonus for Into America listeners, Trymaine joins Chris Hayes on Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast to catch up on life, the latest news, and what’s to come in the midterm elections. Plus, Chris gets an inside look at the new Into America series “The Power of the Black Vote.” Listen to the full episode now. And check out more Why Is This Happening? wherever you get your podcasts.
Sep 27, 2022•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
