Into America

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 persistenc...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 afte...

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. A...

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 unde...

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,...

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 los...

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 cryptocurren...

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...

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 th...

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 winn...

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...

As Russian forces advanced from the east during the war in Ukraine , they faced unexpectedly fierce opposition from the Ukrainian military and civilian population. And as fighting intensified, many in its path fled west.  But as people fled, not everyone was the given the same opportunity to seek refuge. In the middle of a war zone anti-Black racism reared its ugly head, with reports of people fro...

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?  Within 24 hours of posting his project online, Cooper got a call from Westbrook, the production company owned by Will and J...

During the Democratic primary of 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden made a historic pledge: given the opportunity, he would nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. With the announcement of Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement earlier this year, President Biden had an opportunity to fulfill that pledge. And he delivered. After weeks of speculation in the media, and comments from the right,...

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. Church historian Elizabeth Alston tells Trymaine Lee, that in the 1820s, white people burned down Mother Emanuel in retaliation over a failed slave rebellion. For...

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...

One question has plagued our nation since its founding: will Black people in America ever experience full citizenship?   In searching for an answer, Into America is collaborating with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for a series on the legacy of Reconstruction. We tour the museum’s Make Good the Promises exhibit with co-curator Spencer Crew, who helps use...

Into America was nominated for a 2022 NAACP Image Award! We’re finalists in the Outstanding News and Information Podcast category, and we need your vote. Go to vote.naacpimageawards.net to cast your ballot today. In February 2021, Into America launched Harlem on My Mind, a series that followed four figures from the Harlem Renaissance who defined Blackness for themselves and what it means to be Bla...

It’s been one year since Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, assuming office in the middle of a deadly pandemic , and the most significant push for racial justice the country has seen since the Civil Rights era. Amidst the social polarization promoted by former president Donald Trump, Biden inherited a House of Representatives where his party holds a razor-...

In 1969, a group of young Black educators and students in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn founded a pan-African organization called The East. They wanted to take control of their community but knew the only way to do that was to create businesses and institutions founded by, run by, and made for them.  The East became a mecca of Black pride and celebration. They created schools centered around Africa...

The rioters on January 6th were overwhelmingly white and male. But sprinkled throughout the mob were several Black people and other people of color.  In fact, a Black man who organized the January 6th “stop the steal” rally. It was from that rally’s podium that then-president Donald Trump exhorted his followers to take their grievances down the street to the Capitol building. And Enrique Tarrio, l...