Into America

Tracy McMillan’s  dad spent most of her life in prison, getting out for the last time when she was in her 40s. But for all the movies and shows about prison, she hadn’t seen her experience portrayed on screen in a way that resonated with her.  So, as a successful television writer and author, she decided to  write it herself — for her and the millions of others who grew up with a parent behind bar...

Black women are three times more likely to suffer from pregnancy and childbirth complications than white women. And when faced with a health scare, terminating a pregnancy has been a way for doctors to save the life of the mother. But under strict new limits on abortion, doctors are often forced to hold off on critical care, like in Florida, where a 15-week ban meant that Anya Cook almost died aft...

The conversative, white majority in Mississippi’s state legislature has continued to systematically undermine the ability of its capital, the Black city of Jackson, to govern itself.   Pointing to the city’s homicide rate — the highest of any major city in the country — state lawmakers contended that Jackson’s police department isn’t equipped to handle crime, and moved to expand the powers of the...

In March of 2019, Morgan Cooper dropped a video on YouTube that quickly went viral. It was a short film that he made as a passion project, after he was struck with a flash of inspiration: What if the 90’s classic The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were updated for the 21st century?  Three years later, Bel-Air premiered on Peacock to record-breaking numbers, with Cooper as director and executive producer....

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...

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 commun...

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, i...

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 Gar...

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 s...

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 be...

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...

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 Califor...

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...

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 migrati...

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 profe...

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 t...

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 tea...

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...

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 vote...

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 m...

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...

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 Turn...

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...

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 Bl...

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 distin...