Into America

MS NOW Presents: Clock It with Symone and Eugene

Eugene Daniels, Symone Sanders Townsend — Thu, 5 Feb 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Symone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels were once at odds as White House staffer and White House reporter. Now they’re friends and colleagues—each co-hosting their own shows at MS NOW. But their off-air conversations are where the real action is. Their new show, “MS NOW Presents: Clock It” is an invitation to their groupchat, the liveliest—and most informative—in news. Whether it’s ICE getting dispatched to the Super Bowl because Bad Bunny’s doing the halftime show, or Nicolás Maduro’s Nike Tech fit, or Michael B. Jordan’s sole Oscar nomination despite playing three roles in Sinners, there is no collision between culture and politics that this show won’t document and decipher. Symone and Eugene see exactly what’s going on—and they want you to clock it, too.

New episodes drop every Thursday, starting February 12th. Search for “MS NOW Presents: Clock It” and hit “follow” so you don’t miss an episode.

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Preview of “Rachel Maddow Presents: Burn Order”

MS NOW — Mon, 1 Dec 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Rachel Maddow’s new series lays bare one of the most shocking decisions in American history. It’s story that reveals how an executive order authorizing the mass roundup of innocent Japanese Americans came to be, the powerful players who engineered it, and the burn order that tried to erase it from history.

Stay right here to listen to a special preview of “Rachel Maddow Presents: Burn Order.” And for the full episode, search for “Burn Order” and follow the show.

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BONUS: Trymaine Lee Joins Chris Hayes to Talk About His New Book

Chris Hayes, Trymaine Lee — Wed, 1 Oct 2025 07:00:00 +0000

As a bonus for Into America listeners, we're sharing Trymaine's recent conversation on Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes podcast. Trymaine discusses his new book, “A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America" and talks about the weight of being a Black man in America, of bearing witness, as a journalist, to relentless Black death, the toll of intergenerational oppression and more.

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Uncounted Millions BONUS: Nikole Hannah-Jones & Michael Harriot Live

Trymaine Lee, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Michael Harriot — Fri, 31 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In a follow up to the series Uncounted Millions: the Power of Reparations - which chronicled the remarkable story of Gabriel Coakley, one of the only Black Americans to ever receive reparations for slavery – Trymaine Lee hosted a live discussion and debate on the future of reparations for Black Americans at the 92nd Street Y on May 29th, 2024. Trymaine was joined onstage by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and creator of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and author and columnist at thegrio.com, Michael Harriot. The conversation ranged from the case for reparations today...what might be owed and who should qualify...and what might it take for legislation to finally break through.

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Join Into America at the 92nd Street Y

Trymaine Lee, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Michael Harriot — Tue, 14 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Into America has a live show coming up! Pulitzer prize-winning writer Nikole Hannah-Jones and acclaimed author and columnist Michael Harriot will join host Trymaine Lee onstage at the 92nd St Y in New York City on Wednesday May 29th. As a follow up to our “Uncounted Millions” series, Trymaine, Nikole, and Michael will grapple with what reparations could and should look like for Black Americans going forward. You can join us in-person or via live stream.

Get your tickets now while still available.

For more:

Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations

The 1619 Project

Michael Harriot’s columns at theGrio

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Uncounted Millions BONUS: The GU272

Trymaine Lee, Father Tim Kesicki, Kyla Matthews, Monique Trusclair Maddox — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” host Trymaine Lee used the story of Gabriel Coakley and his family to explore past and future conversations around reparations. That conversation has come to include educational institutions, many of which were built and sustained through enslavement, like the one mere blocks from Coakley’s home in Washington, DC: Georgetown University. On this special bonus episode, sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Into America dives into racial reconciliation and the GU272. Trymaine speaks with descendants of the 272 enslaved people sold to save the university, and the Jesuit leader trying to work towards repair. What can these conversations teach us about what, if anything, can be done to heal the past?

If you want more of Into America & you’re close to New York, check out a live event at the 92nd Street Y on May 29. We’ll continue the conversation on reparations with special guests Nikole Hannah-Jones and Michael Harriot. For more information, go to 92NY.org/events.

And, some great news: Into America and our colleagues at Prosecuting Donald Trump have been nominated for Webby Awards! And MSNBC needs your help to win. Check out vote.webbyawards.com and search for “MSNBC” to vote for both shows.

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Uncounted Millions, Ep 5: Reparations Now

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Can reparations be a reality for all Black Americans? In New York, the state Gabriel Coakley’s descendants now call home, the governor has signed a bill creating a task force to consider reparations for formerly enslaved people. It’s the third state to do so. But beyond local considerations, does this debate have real momentum at a national level? In the final episode of “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” we take a look at public opinion polling on reparations, along with the dollars and cents of making this a reality across the country. And we return to Gabriel Coakley’s descendants to understand how the family plans to keep alive the legacy of service and Black liberation he started a century and a half ago.

As we round out our series, Trymaine is joined by: the Coakley-Flateau family, Duke University professor Dr. William Darity, New York Senator Zellnor Myrie, Amherst political science professor Tatishe Nteta, and archivist Dr. Lopez Matthews.

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Uncounted Millions, Ep 4: The Cost of Healing

Thu, 7 Mar 2024 10:00:00 +0000

As the Coakley and Flateau families change and grow through time, so too does the conversation on reparations for Black Americans. In this episode of “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” both families move west to California, ultimately converging. Soon after, the Japanese Redress movement begins to shape the modern push for reparations in Black America.

In part 4, Trymaine is joined by: attorney Don Tamaki, activist Emily Akpan and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

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Uncounted Millions, Ep 3: Things Fall Apart

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Gabriel Coakley was an exception. But what about the rule? In episode 3 of “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” we’ll travel with Coakley’s descendants as they attempt to learn about the other side of their family, the Flateaus. Most Black families were met with nothing but their freedom after the Civil War and, in some cases, barely even that. Like most, the Flateau family didn’t enter this new era with any sort of government payment for past wrongs. So how did they build a life for themselves? Trymaine joins the family for a trip to Louisiana to unearth some of this history. Along the way, they also get to the bottom of a big family secret.

This episode, Trymaine is joined by: Adele and Desmond Flateau, historian Dr. Sharlene Sinegal-DeCuir, and a series of Louisiana archivists he meets along the way.

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Uncounted Millions, Ep 2: Take What's Owed

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000

In episode 2 of “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” Gabriel Coakley builds on the freedom and success found in the first part of our series by going after what’s been denied to most Black families in America: financial freedom. Trymaine Lee traces Coakley’s legacy to understand how a surprising influx of money gave his family access to worlds and privileges denied to most African Americans at the turn of the Century through to today.

Trymaine is joined by: siblings John, Adele and Richard Flateau; cousins Desmond and Antoine Flateau; and professors Chris Myers Asch and Kellie Carter Jackson.

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Uncounted Millions, Ep 1: Let's Get Free

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000

The movement for reparations is gaining traction across the country, as cities and states debate what is owed to the descendants of the formerly enslaved. This question – what is owed? – has plagued America since the Civil War. But what Into America discovered is that through a strange legal loophole, a small number of Black people may have managed to get paid. In this series, “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” Pulitzer- and Emmy-winning host Trymaine Lee follows the story of Gabriel Coakley, perhaps one of the only Black men in America to receive something akin to reparations. We look at the mark it left on his family for generations and ask: if more Black families had been given a lump sum of money 150 years ago, how might the inequities facing Black America look different today? And how might knowing this story change our current conversation on reparations in America?

Episode 1 begins in Brooklyn with Coakley’s descendants. With them, we travel back to before the Civil War to learn about Gabriel Coakley’s fight for freedom and, eventually, restitution.In addition to Coakley descendants John, Adele, and Richard Flateau, Trymaine is joined by: author Dr. Chris Myers Asch, archivistsDr. Lopez Matthews and Ishamel Childs, and professor Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson.

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Presenting Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 8 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Into America is back! In a new series, “Uncounted Millions,” we take a look at one of today's most pressing debates: reparations. On a journey that begins in the nation’s capital during the heat of the Civil War and ends in modern day Brooklyn, host Trymaine Lee follows the little-known story of one of the only Black people to receive reparations, and the mark it left on that family for generations to come. The series asks: if more Black families had been given reparations decades ago, how might Black America look different today?

And with this series, we’re kicking off a brand new format for Into America. Going forward, we’ll be a seasonal show, giving us a chance to dive deep into the topics most salient for Black America.

Here’s a sneak peek of “Uncounted Millions.” Make sure you’re following the show to stay up to date. The series debuts Thursday, February 15th.

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BONUS: Trymaine Lee Joins "Why Is This Happening?" Live in Chicago

Trymaine Lee, Chris Hayes, Vic Mensa, Imani Perry — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:00:00 +0000

Chris Hayes is on tour with his podcast "Why Is This Happening?" for a series of live shows. In Chicago, he celebrated 50 years of hip-hop at the House of Blues. He was joined by scholar Imani Perry, rapper Vic Mensa, and "Into America" host Trymaine Lee. Trymaine talked about why this music has meant so much to him throughout his life, why it matters for Black America - and all Americans, and what new tidbits he learned while making our "Street Disciples" series earlier this year.

Plus, a quick update on "Into America."

For a transcript of the episode and to hear more "Into America" or "Why Is This Happening?" please visit msnbc.com/podcasts.

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Ripples of Affirmative Inaction in California

Trymaine Lee, Quamé Love, Eddie Cole, Donna Collins, Kyndall Dowell — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Nearly 30 years ago, California voters approved Prop 209, which banned affirmative action for the state’s public universities. For some elite schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA, Black student enrollment plummeted, changing the campuses for decades to come. On Into America, we’re going back to Cali to get a glimpse of what life on campus was like during the golden age of Black student enrollment, how the campus responded to threats to end affirmative action, and what the eventual end of the program meant for generations of Black students.

Trymaine Lee speaks with former Cal student Quamé Love, along with others who have walked the campus over the years, and he’s joined by UCLA history and education professor Eddie R. Cole for context on what the Supreme Court’s decision means at this moment in the nation’s history.

In this episode, you can also get a sneak peak of actress Alfre Woodard reading the entirety of Justice Brown Jackson’s dissent in the recent Supreme Court case over affirmative action for our friends over at The Beat.

And an update from Into America: we’re going to be stepping away for a few months to work on a new reporting project. So we’ll be back in your feeds with a special season of the show shortly. But if you miss us before then, why not re-listen to a few of our favorite episodes below?

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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UPDATE: Into Reparations with Nikole Hannah-Jones

Trymaine Lee, Nikole Hannah-Jones — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 09:00:00 +0000

California’s official task force on reparations has delivered its final report to the state legislature.

The report includes a formula for determining direct financial compensation, along with more than 100 other recommendations, including establishing universal health care, implementing rent caps in historically redlined neighborhoods, and making Election Day a paid holiday.

And in their report, the authors spent a significant amount of time explaining why reparations are necessary for the descendants of enslaved Black Americans, and why the government is responsible.

Three years ago, host Trymaine Lee spoke about this case for reparations with Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, and now, a journalism professor at Howard University. The conversation came right after Nikole published her article “What is Owed” in her role as a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine.

In light of California taking one small step closer toward reparations, we’re bringing back that discussion.

This podcast was originally published on June 24, 2020.

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Get Your Freaknik On (2022)

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 6 Jul 2023 09:00:00 +0000

When the news of a Freaknik documentary hit Twitter, people joked about seeing their parents, aunts, uncles on film having too much of a good time. Freaknik was a legendary street party that started in Atlanta back in the early 80s and became a destination for young Black people to dance, watch step shows, and see concerts.

“It was the perfect storm. You know, it could not happen anywhere else. It had to happen in Atlanta,” rap legend Uncle Luke told Trymaine Lee. At one point, Luke was crowned “King of Freaknik.”

This week Into America continues our celebration of Hip-Hop 50 by revisiting the rise and fall of the greatest block party America has ever seen, and the impact that Freaknik still has on Atlanta and Black youth culture today. Featuring the people who lived it, including Uncle Luke, Maurice Hobson, radio host Kenny Burns, and Freaknik co-founder Sharon Toomer.

(Original release date: June 30, 2022)

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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BONUS: Understanding Affirmative Action

Trymaine Lee, Cara McClellan — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0000

This week, the US Supreme Court struck down the use of Affirmative Action in higher education, in one of the most widely watched cases of the summer.

As part of his television reporting, Trymaine Lee had a conversation with professor Cara McClellan of the University of Pennsylvania’s law school in the lead up to the decision. They talked about the history of this policy, as well as the stakes of losing it. And we wanted to share the conversation with you here on the pod as well.

For more analysis of the Supreme Court decision, check out MSNBC. And keep your eyes on your podcast feeds for more from us in the coming weeks.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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Aging with Pride

Trymaine Lee, Naomi Cobb, Phill Wilson — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Every June, Pride month is a time for self-expression and celebration. But the road here was paved with struggle and sacrifice.

From confronting police during the Stonewall Uprising, to fighting to stay afloat during the AIDS crisis, to battling in the courtroom for the basic rights of citizenship, generations of LGBTQ people have faced gains and losses.

Of the frontlines of each of these fights have been queer baby boomers.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks to elders of the Black community: Naomi Ruth Cobb, a Black lesbian activist from Florida, and Phill Wilson, of the Black AIDS Institute, based in California. We hear two stories, from opposite ends of the country, and learn what it means to find community, grow older, and never back down in the fight for equality.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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‘Black Folk’ and the Soul of America

Trymaine Lee, Blair LM Kelley — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0000

America as we know it today would be nothing without Black labor. From the first enslaved Africans who built our economy, to the unheralded agricultural and domestic workers during segregation, to the frontline workers who put their health on the line during the pandemic.

Historian Blair LM Kelley has been highlighting the stories of the Black working class her whole career. In her new book Black Folk, she traces the story of Black workers from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement. Kelley unearths forgotten stories of the sharecroppers, washerwomen, Pullman Porters, and US Postal Service employees (to name a few) who provided the engine for the American economy for generations.

Beginning with her own family’s history, she details not only the hardships Black workers faced, but also the joy in community, and collective power in labor organizing, the effects of which still echo today.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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‘Absolute Equality’ in the Home of Juneteenth

Trymaine Lee, June Pulliam, Anthony Griffin, Sam Collins — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3: “the people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” The day became known as Juneteenth, commemorating the actual end of slavery in the United States.

Yet more than a century and a half later, Black people in Galveston are still fighting for the “absolute equality” promised to them in that order.

The biggest threat today is gentrification, which began after Hurricane Ike in 2008 destroyed the city’s overwhelmingly Black public housing. The situation was made worse recently by a short-term rental boom fueled by the pandemic. Since 2000, the Black population has plummeted by 38 percent.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee travels to Galveston to speak with Sam Collins of the Juneteenth Legacy Project, June Pulliam, whose great-great grandparents moved to the island in 1865, and lawyer and activist Anthony P. Griffin, who is trying to preserve land for Black folks in this historic city.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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I’m Trym(AI)ne Lee

Trymaine Lee, Gelyn Watkins — Thu, 8 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The future is now. Artificial Intelligence already exists in smartphones, helps power social media algorithms, and is accessible through countless apps. AI has generated rappers with records deals and political attack ads.

But as AI gains mainstream attention, AI-powered software that helps landlords select tenants has been proven to discriminate against Black applicants and algorithms have misinterpreted healthcare data, resulting in fewer services for Black patients.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with Gelyn Watkins of Black in AI, to understand the implications of AI for Black America. Together, they test a popular app for accuracy and bias. And, Trymaine has a conversation with the AI version of himself.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

For a transcript & to check out an AI-generated image of Trymaine, please visit our homepage.

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Don’t Send the Police: Freedom House Rides Again

Trymaine Lee, Rachel Gilmer, Armen Henderson — Thu, 1 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Last week, Into America told the story of Freedom House, a Black-run ambulance service that defined American EMS in the late 1960s. Today, The Healing and Justice Center in Miami, FL operates Freedom House Mobile and Crisis Units, expanding the legacy of wellness from physical to emotional and mental health.

In this special two-part story, Into America explores Freedom House then and now; and how Black communities have always worked to keep themselves safe.

On part two of ‘Don’t Send the Police,’ Trymaine Lee heads to Miami to speak with Rachel Gilmer, the director of the Healing and Justice Center; Dr. Armen Henderson, director of Health Programs at Dream Defenders, the Center’s parent organization; and others who are spending their days healing the community.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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Don’t Send the Police: Send Freedom House

Trymaine Lee, John Moon — Thu, 25 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd inspired people to take to the streets in America and overseas, calling for cop reform, the defunding of police, or saying police should be abolished altogether. And as racial injustices continued, communities took matters into their own hands. The Healing and Justice Center in Miami, FL rolled out Freedom House Mobile and Crisis Units as an alternative to people having to call police, particularly in mental health emergencies.

The group draws its name and inspiration fromFreedom House in Pittsburgh, which in 1968, became the nation’s first paramedics. Prior to 1968, police would transport people to the hospital during medical emergencies; but in Black communities, the result was often a disaster. Freedom House was all Black, rooted in community, and able to save lives.

In a special two-part story, Into America explores Freedom House then and now; and how Black communities have always worked to keep themselves safe.

On part one of ‘Don’t Send the Police,’ Trymaine Lee speaks with retired paramedic and health-care worker John Moon about how Freedom House began, and its lasting impact for generations to come.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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Writers Strike Black

Trymaine Lee, Anthony Sparks — Thu, 18 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The entertainment industry and its TV and film writers can’t get on the same page. For the first time in over a decade, the Writers Guild of America is on strike. Shows like Saturday Night Live have already stopped production, with more to come as the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers try to reach a labor agreement.

As networks and film studios continue make record-high profits, writers are fighting for livable wages and fair compensation in the streaming era. And for the Black writers and the community at large, there’s much more at stake.

For decades, Black writers were shut out of writers’ rooms, unable to tell their own stories. As the industry changed, these scribes were only relegated to write comedy. Today, just a handful have made it to the top of the television hierarchy as showrunners.

Anthony Sparks, a 20-year industry veteran told Trymaine Lee that for him, the strike is about making sure writing can continue to be a viable career path for people like him. Because if the industry doesn’t change, Black writers could get squeezed out, and Black audiences risk losing representation, or worse – having outsiders control it.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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Healing in Buffalo

Thu, 11 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In May of last year, Tops Supermarket in East Buffalo was attacked by a lone white supremacist. Motivated by “great replacement theory,” the shooter targeted an area densely populated with Black residents, leaving this community grief-stricken.

Into America visited Buffalo and spoke with residents shortly after the incident, so now, on the anniversary of the shooting, Trymaine Lee headed back to East Buffalo to revisit this community which has found strength and healing through each other.

Trymaine Lee speaks with Trinetta Alston, a nurse who’s made it her mission to look after the Tops survivors. And he visits the Love Supreme School of Music, which is putting on a series of wellness concerts for the community. And we get a heartwarming update from former guest Fragrance Harris Stanfield, who was working at Tops the day of the shooting.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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For Delroy Lindo and Tracy McMillan, Art Imitates Life

Trymaine Lee, Tracy McMillan, Delroy Lindo — Thu, 4 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 bars. After years of work, Tracy’s story became Hulu’s new hit show UnPrisoned.

It’s a funny and heartfelt take on what happens when a father who has spent decades in prison, played by Delroy Lindo, comes to live with his adult daughter, played by Kerry Washington.

This week, Trymaine sits down with Tracy and Delroy, for an eye-opening conversation about their experiences from childhood, their relationship with their fathers, and the healing power of art.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

For More:

Watch the trailer for UnPrisoned
The Re-Freshed Prince of Bel Air
Kerry Washington talks ‘Unprisoned,’ writing a memoir

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The Right to Life

Trymaine Lee, Anya Cook, Zsekeba Henderson — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 after she began experiencing something called PPROM, which can cause infection and hemorrhaging.

Months after that incident, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill aimed to shorten the state’s ban to just 6 weeks, potentially putting more lives in the balance.

On Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with Anya, as well as OBGYN Dr. Zsakeba Henderson, to learn how abortion limits are disproportionately affecting Black mothers nearly one year since Roe was overturned.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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Policing Jackson

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 Capitol Police, a law enforcement agency that answers to the state.

But the Capitol Police unit has little experience fighting crime, and in the months since its reach was first expanded last summer, the force has become known for its aggressive tactics — including four shootings in the last half of 2022, one of them fatal. In that same time, there were just 10 officer-involved shootings in the rest of the state.

This week, Into America heads to Jackson to speak with Black residents affected by this expansion: Latasha Smith, who was shot in her bedroom by Capitol Police, Arkela Lewis, a mother who lost her son, pastor Dr. Dwayne Pickett, State Representative Earle Banks (D-Jackson), and anti-violence activist Terun Moore.

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The Re-Freshed Prince of Bel-Air (2022)

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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. The season two finale drops on Peacock on April 27th, and the show was recently renewed for a third season.

For Into America, host Trymaine Lee spoke with Morgan Cooper about Bel-Air, the creative decisions he’s making with the show, and his lightning quick rise in Hollywood. Trymaine also spoke with actress Cassandra Freeman, who plays Aunt Viv in the new show, as well as hip hop icon DJ Jazzy Jeff, who played Jazz on the original Fresh Prince, and who hosted Bel-Air: The Official Podcast.

(Original release date: March 10, 2022)

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Case of LaKeith Smith

Trymaine Lee, Tina Smith, Leroy Maxwell, Daniel Forkkio, Andre Washington — Thu, 6 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 disproportionately hurts young, Black and brown men.

In a March resentencing hearing, a judge ruled that LaKeith’s sentences could be served concurrently, thus reducing his overall time; but LaKeith’s family and supporters were still left heartbroken, because even with this reduction, he’s facing a 30-year sentence.

Trymaine Lee spoke to LaKeith’s mother, Tina Smith, about her family’s continued fight for justice. And we talked to lawyer Leroy Maxwell and activist Daniel Forkkio, along with Andre Washington, the father of A’Donte Washington, about what true justice for his son would look like.

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Sacrifice Zones

Trymaine Lee, Katherine Ferguson, Sacoby Wilson — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 other dangerous pollutants.

This week, Into America heads to Institute, West Virginia, a Black town that has long dealt with toxic air from nearby chemical plants, to talk with resident and activist Katherine Ferguson, interim director of the community group Our Future West Virginia, about the town’s fight for justice. Trymaine Lee also talks with Dr. Sacoby Wilson, a public health professor at the University of Maryland, about why Black communities like this one are hit hardest by environmental concerns, and what can be done to prevent further disaster.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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Teaching the Truth

Trymaine Lee, Marvin Dunn — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 environment where teaching hard truths about history is discouraged. He decided to start the Teach the Truth tour.

This week, Trymaine Lee hops on the tour bus with Into America to speak with Dr. Dunn and students about what’s at stake when it comes to learning the truth about American history. They visit historic sites related to the Ocoee Massacre, the lynching of Willie James Howard, and the Black town of Rosewood, which was destroyed a hundred years ago by a white mob.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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UPDATE: Into Injustice for Breonna Taylor

Trymaine Lee, Hannah Drake — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 are releasing today bear that out.”

This week, which marks three years since Breonna Taylor was killed, Into America returns to Trymaine Lee’s conversation with Hannah Drake, a Louisville activist Hannah Drake who helped elevate Breonna’s story on social media, and was part of an effort to push the city council to pass Breonna’s Law — a ban on “no-knock” warrants.

We also check in with Hannah about the investigation’s findings, Louisville’s rotating police chiefs, and her hopes for the future.

(Original release date: September 24, 2020)

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How Basquiat Earned His Crown (2022)

MS NOW — Thu, 9 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 the artist’s place in art history?

For Into America, Trymaine Lee spoke with Basquiat’s former bandmate and friend, Michael Holman, about the young artist’s coming of age in 1980s New York and the crisis of Basquiat’s archive with American art historian Dr. Jordana Saggese. And finally we take a trip to Basquiat’s childhood and speak with Basquiat’s younger sisters, Jeanine Heriveaux and Lisane Basquiat, to unfold their early relationship and an exhibition King Pleasure they have curated in honor of their late brother.

(Original release date: April 28, 2022)

The exhibition will be on display at the Grand in downtown LA starting March 31st. "Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure" features over 200 works, and includes recreations of the Basquiat family home in Brooklyn, Jean-Michel's studio on Great Jones Street, and the VIP room at Palladium nightclub, as it was in the late 1980s.

Special thanks to Dr Mark Anthony Neal for his research support.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

For More:

Street Disciples: The Concrete Jungle
Street Disciples: Broken Glass Everywhere
Healing Tremé

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Street Disciples, Ep 5: We Gon’ Be Alright

MS NOW — Thu, 2 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

Editors’ Note: an earlier version contained an incorrect time period for the death of Michael Stewart. The story has been updated.

For More:

Street Disciples: The Concrete Jungle
Street Disciples: Broken Glass Everywhere
Street Disciples: America’s Most Wanted
Street Disciples: If I Ruled the World

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Street Disciples, Ep 4: If I Ruled the World

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 mobilization of a generation and the first hip-hop president: Barack Obama.

Trymaine Lee is joined by: rapper Master P, stic of the hip-hop duo Dead Prez, rapper & activist Tef Poe, Vote or Die’s Alexis McGill Johnson, political organizer Rosa Clemente, and writer Joan Morgan.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

For More:

Street Disciples: The Concrete Jungle
Street Disciples: Broken Glass Everywhere
Street Disciples: America’s Most Wanted

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Street Disciples, Ep 3: America’s Most Wanted

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 the so-called “golden age” of hip-hop, a time of maturing and sophistication in the music. But along with that maturity came uncertainty from national leaders, and a new wave of commercialization that threatened to unravel this political artform.

On this episode of “Street Disciples,” Trymaine Lee hears from: Daddy-O from the hip-hop group Stetsasonic, rapper and producer The D.O.C., Video Music Box’s Ralph McDaniels, radio host Bobbito Garcia, writer Nelson George, and journalist Davey D.

Note: this episode contains several instances of profanity.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

For More:

Street Disciples: The Concrete Jungle
Street Disciples: Broken Glass Everywhere

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Street Disciples, Ep 2: Broken Glass Everywhere

Thu, 9 Feb 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 environment through dance, fashion, and graffiti. But with the growth in the culture came a crackdown on Black America: in the form of “broken windows” policing, and then a ramped up War on Drugs.And as some members of the hip-hop counterculture became targets of police harassment, they began to fight the power with work that was bold and demanding..

In the second episode of “Street Disciples,” Trymaine Lee hears from: Melle Mel of the Furious Five, fashion designer Dapper Dan, graffiti artist Cey Adams, sociologist Tricia Rose, historian Mark Anthony Neal, and hip-hop activist Harry Allen.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

For More:

Street Disciples, part one: The Concrete Jungle
Check out the Into America playlist on Spotify

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Street Disciples, Ep 1: The Concrete Jungle

Thu, 2 Feb 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 of hip-hop in the summer of 1973.

Hip-hop is turning 50 this year. So, for Black History Month, Into America is presenting “Street Disciples: Politics, Power, and the Rise of Hip-Hop.” Trymaine Lee is looking back on the political conditions and policies that have inspired half a century of hip-hop, and how over time, hip-hop began to shape America.

On part one of “Street Disciples,” how the concrete jungle of New York in the 1970s led to the birth and spread of hip-hop. Trymaine is joined by: Kool DJ Red Alert, DJ Grandwizzard Theodore, historian Mark Anthony Neal, sociologist Tricia Rose, and journalist Davey D.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

Check out our previous Black History series here:

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Reconstructed, Ep 4: The Book of Trayvon (2022)

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 Reconstruction and Trayvon Martin. “The way he was targeted for minding his own business, the way he was demonized, and in some cases blamed for his own [death] is very consistent with what happened during Reconstruction,” she explains.

Like Emmett Till before him, Trayvon’s story galvanized a people and changed a nation. Protests sprang up across the country as the story gained traction, helped in large part by Trymaine Lee’s reporting. A generation of young people became activists, and the phrase “Black Lives Matter” became a rallying cry.

But when Trayvon became a face of the movement, it came with a cost — born largely by those closest to Trayvon, like his dad, Tracy Martin. "I’m giving to society, but do society really understand what I've given up?” he asks. "We don't look to bury our kids. We don't look to eulogize them or try to define what their legacy is to be. And during that process, man, it just, it really tears you up.”

(Original release date: February 24, 2022)

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For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Reconstructed, Ep 3: Keep the Faith, Baby (2022)

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 Reconstruction, they rebuilt.

Mother Emanuel’s history mirrors the story of Black America. Through the centuries, faith has helped Black people find freedom, community, and strength, even in the face of violence.

This tradition of faith in the face of backlash holds true today. Trymaine talks with Bree Newsome Bass, whose incredible protest of scaling a 30-foot pole to take down the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state capitol made her an icon of the movement. Bree’s actions led to the permanent removal of the Confederate flag from the state house. And she tells Trymaine that faith was the foundation of it all.

(Original release date: February 17, 2022)

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For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Healing Tremé

Trymaine Lee, Raynard Sanders — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 22:00:00 +0000

New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood is one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in America, and at the heart of that wasClaiborne 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 community.

Raynard Sanders a lifelong New Orleanian and the Executive Director of the Claiborne History Project. He says the most important thing is that the community have a say in what happens next. On this bonus episode of Into America, he talks to host Trymaine Lee about the history of the Tremé neighborhood, and the fight to save it.

This conversation is part of an MSNBC town hall on racial equity and healing, hosted by Trymaine Lee, Joy Reid, and Chris Hayes, and sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation.

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For a transcript, please visit our homepage.

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Reconstructed, Ep 2: In Search of the Promised Land (2022)

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 after the Civil War in the Upcountry region, Promised Land, South Carolina was self-sufficient, with a church, school, and farms to nourish its people’s mind and body. Trymaine talks to Reverend Willie Neal Norman Jr. and Elestine Smith Norman, a couple who can trace their Promised Lands roots back over a century.

And Into America travels to rural Georgia to learn about a group of 19 families who bought several hundred acres in 2020 with the dream of creating a new town: Freedom.

(Original release date: February 10, 2022)

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For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Reconstructed, Ep 1: Birth of a Black Nation (2022)

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 5 Jan 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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 power.

Perhaps no one exemplifies this more than the late Congressman Robert Smalls. As his great-great-grandson Michael Boulware Moore tells Trymaine Lee, Smalls’ daring escape from slavery and wartime actions made him a hero. Then, like hundreds of newly freed Black Americans, he decided to get involved in politics in his hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina.

And more than a century later, we still see the impact of this brief time of Black political power, through people like the current Democratic National Committee chair and South Carolina native Jaime Harrison, who tells Trymaine how today’s 20th-Century fight for voting rights is a continuation of the Reconstruction era.

(Original release date: February 3, 2022)

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For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Where Are They Now?, 2022 Edition

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 after completing its first semester. Plus, we get new insights from Trymaine Lee’s daughter, Nola Lee, who just turned 10. As we reflect with our guests, we want to take this time to thank you, the listeners, for coming on this journey with us.

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For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

For More:

To listen to each of the original episodes in this year-end update, visit our website or click the links in the description above
And check our guest updates from the end of 2021

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Christmas, But Make it Black

Trymaine Lee, Naima Cochrane, Nadine Scott McKinnor — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 Ghetto,” and more!

And, we get the back-story on “This Christmas” from Nadine Scott McKinnor, the writer behind the Donny Hathaway classic.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

For More:

Naima’s Christmas Playlists: Baby Jesus, Bells, and Bodyrolls, Jazzy Holiday, & Soulfulass Christmas
And check out the Into America playlist on Spotify

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Into Our Mailbag

Trymaine Lee, Aisha Turner — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 moments, trickiest decisions, and what’s coming next for the show.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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For More:

Check out the Into America playlist on Spotify
Bethesda’s Lost Colony
Black and Blue
After George Floyd

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Bethesda’s Lost Colony

Trymaine Lee, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, Harvey Mathews — Thu, 8 Dec 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 Marsha became part of a years-long fight between the county and former residents of River Road, the once-thriving Black community within Bethesda, to save and memorialize the Moses Macedonia African Cemetery.

This week, Trymaine travels to River Road to meet with Marsha and Harvey Mathews, a descendant of the community who can still remember what once was. They visit the site of the former cemetery and the tiny church fighting to preserve the memory of their ancestors.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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#RIPBlackTwitter?

Trymaine Lee, Meredith D. Clark, Jamilah Lemieux — Thu, 1 Dec 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 vibrant, creative, and influential communities: Black Twitter.

Black Twitter has given us countless memes and viral videos, and powered movements like #OscarsSoWhite and #BlackLivesMatter. But does Elon Musk’s leadership mean the end of the Black Twitter we know? Host Trymaine Lee talks with Meredith D. Clark, a professor at Northeastern who studies Black Twitter, and Jamilah Lemieux, a writer who has been a prominent voice in the community.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Blue Skies, Black Wings

Trymaine Lee, Tremaine Johnson, Barrington Irving, Gary Robinson — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 Black pilots.

Yet, despite the advances of the twentieth century, today less than 2% of pilots are Black, with the high cost of learning to fly acting as a barrier to many. Now, as the nation faces pilot shortages, the airline industry is turning to HBCUs to fill the gap. Major airlines like United, Southwest and Delta have partnered with the schools to fill their cockpits with more diverse pilots.

This week on Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks to Captain Barrington Irving about his efforts to inspire the next generation of Black pilots and about his barrier-breaking career in the skies. Captain Irving is the founder of the Flying Classroom, and in 2007 he became the first Black man, and the youngest person at the time, to fly around the world solo. We check in with Captain Irving’s mentee, Tremaine Johnson, who’s learning to fly at an HBCU in Florida. And we speak with Captain Irving’s own mentor, Captain Gary Robinson, who began his career at a time when there were even less Black pilots than there are today.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Wakanda is Forever

Trymaine Lee, Kelley Carter, Eve Ewing — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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, who had played King T’Challa aka the Black Panther, director Ryan Coogler decided the movie would tackle the tragedy head on, and show a nation in mourning.

This week on Into America, Trymaine Lee sits down with Kelley Carter, a reporter for ESPN’s Andscape, to talk about why the franchise resonates so deeply, and how the sequel deals with grief and the legacy of the Black Panther. Trymaine also speaks to author Eve L. Ewing, who writes Marvel’s Ironheart comic series, about the importance of Black superheroes.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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These Polls Ain’t Loyal

Trymaine Lee, Jason Johnson, Cornell Belcher — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 Republican Brian Kemp would stay on as Georgia’s governor. Democrat Stacey Abrams conceded late Tuesday night. And the next morning, the Senate race between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Hershel Walker was to too close to call, and headed for run-off.

On Wednesday morning, Trymaine Lee sat down with analysts Jason Johnson and Cornell Belcher. They talked about what we know so far, what it all means for Black people, and what the early polls got right (and wrong) about the Black vote.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Ghosts of Midterms Past

Trymaine Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Ted Johnson, Fredrick Harris — Thu, 3 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 presidency.

On this episode of Into America, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, recounts what it was like being elected in 1994, and surviving the red wave of 2010 — two elections she says had disastrous consequences for her Black constituents.

And according to Ted Johnson, an expert in the Black electorate at the Brennan Center for Justice, 2022 is shaping up to be another crucial year. Columbia University professor Fredrick Harris put it this way: “History does not repeat itself,” he told us, “but it sure does rhyme.”

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Life, Loss, and Libations

Trymaine Lee, Karla F.C. Holloway, Brittany Brown — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Dr. Karla F.C. Holloway, author of the book “Passed On: African American Mourning Stories, a Memorial,” to discuss the origins of Black burial practices, how these traditions are passed down, and why they matter. Historical archeologist Dr. Brittany L. Brown also joins us to talk about her research into a previously undiscovered African American burial site.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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W. Kamau Bell to White People: “Do the Work!”

Trymaine Lee, W. Kamau Bell — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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, exploring the unique challenges they face. Along the way Bell has developed a fan base eager to hear his thoughts on race. And many of those fans are white allies.

Bell's latest book, co-authored with Kate Schatz, who is white, is directed squarely at those white fans. Titled Do The Work!, it’s structured as a workbook for adults, complete with concrete actions they can take to create an anti-racist society. This week on Into America, host Trymaine Lee sits down with Bell to discuss how the book overlaps with his career in comedy. Plus, he and Trymaine take a deep dive into their favorite Denzel Washington movies.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Power of the Black Vote: Creating A New South

Trymaine Lee, Ciarra Malone, Janiah Henry — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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. For years, Black student voter turnout was on the decline in the state, but with rising voter suppression tactics and voter purges, student organizers and grassroots organizations started a movement to get out the vote. This resulted in an unprecedented Black youth voter turnout in the 2020 general election, which ultimately led to Georgia turning blue for the first time in years.

But with the midterm election right around the corner, student organizers like Janiah Henry, a student political activist at Clark Atlanta University, are struggling to keep that momentum going.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine speaks with Henry about how she is energizing the Black youth to get out and vote this November. He also speaks with Ciarra Malone, an organizer forCampus Vote Project, who has made it her mission to strengthen civic engagement on HBCU campuses throughout the state.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Power of the Black Vote: We Save Ourselves

Trymaine Lee, Laurie Bertram Roberts, Maisie Brown, Robert Luckett — Thu, 6 Oct 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 for their communities.

One of those people is Jackson State Junior Maisie Brown. She’s stepped up during the city’s water crisis to fill the gaps left by the state. As part of Into America’s “Power of the Black Vote” tour ahead of the midterms, host Trymaine Lee joins Maisie as she travels around Jackson, delivering clean drinking water to residents.

And we visit Jackson State alum Laurie Bertram Roberts, founder of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. Laurie has spent her life fighting for reproductive rights, but her job has gotten harder after the fall of Roe.

Trymaine also speaks with JSU history professor Robert Luckett about the social and political forces at work in the state.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Power of the Black Vote: Tackling Our Climate Crisis

Trymaine Lee, Jordan Roberts, Jalon Bristol — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 solar-powered water-sensing buoy that collects data for scientists' research and helps filter clean water for oysters to thrive in the bay once again.

This week on Into America, Trymaine Lee visits the sunshine state as part of his “Power of the Black Vote” tour. He joins the Rattler Moji research team to learn how the work they’re doing out on the water has influenced how they think about climate change, and how that could impact their vote in the midterm elections this November.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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BONUS: Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

Trymaine Lee, Chris Hayes — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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.

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The Power of the Black Vote: Knocking Out Student Loan Debt

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 continues to balloon, Black borrowers are taking on more student loan debt than their white peers. And this is impacting families too: Black parents are more likely to take out a Parent PLUS loan to finance their child’s education. Over the summer, President Biden announced his administration’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 for federal loan holders, but the move fell far short of what many activists and organizations, including the NAACP, had been pushing for.

On this episode, we visit Kamree Anderson and Dena Fischer, who share their experience with repaying Parent Plus Loans. Then, host Trymaine Lee speaks with Jonah Vincent, founder of the youth-led organization No Cap, and current NCCU students Heavyn Smith and MarQuay Spencer-Gibbs about how student debt shapes their lives and their perspective for the upcoming midterm elections.

This episode was produced with research support from the Durham-based Center for Responsible Lending.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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For More:

The Power of the Black Vote: Taking Back the Classroom
NBC News survey finds 2022 midterms have entered uncharted territory
NCCU Sound Machine marching band recordings courtesy of rickeytherealist1

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The Power of the Black Vote: Taking Back the Classroom

Trymaine Lee, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Akeem Brown, Dexter Maryland — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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. Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill that outlawed teaching history that causes “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” because of a student’s race. Since then, books have been banned and pulled from shelves, and faculty members who dare to teach lessons on racism and white supremacy in the state are being disciplined or fired.

In this episode of Into America, Trymaine speaks with Texas Southern University students who are pushing back. And he’s joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, NBC News Investigative reporter and co-host of the Southlake podcast, Mike Hixenbaugh, San Antonio educator Akeem Brown, and TSU Student Government Association President Dexter Maryland to have a conversation on race, education, and how we control our history.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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For More:

Watch the TSU Town Hall on Peacock beginning Sept 16
Our Kids Are Scholars
Race and Education in an American Suburb

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Our Kids Are Scholars

Trymaine Lee, Akeem Brown — Thu, 8 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 their charter application, with state authorities saying that they used the words “Black” and “brown” too many times. They lost months of preparation and a multi-million-dollar bond deal. And they accrued thousands of dollars in legal fees along the way.

But through it all, Essence Prep made it to opening day, and Into America was there. This week we take you along for the ride – the highs and lows that founder Akeem Brown traversed to get to this point, as well as the voices of the students, teachers, and parents that make up the community Essence Prep was founded to serve.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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ENCORE: The Daughters of Malcolm and Martin (2021)

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 1 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 MLK, share a birthright of inherited activism that few others can understand. They each run their families’ foundations, the Shabazz Center and King Center, and strive to carry on their parents’ fight for the future.

In the spirit of summer family reunions, we’re revisiting Trymaine Lee’s conversation with Shabazz and King, about their famous parents, the ongoing push for equality, and what it means to inherit a legacy.

(Original release date: April 1, 2021)

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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ENCORE: Black Joy in the Summertime (2021)

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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.

(Original release date: June 10, 2021)

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Choppin’ It Up With Damon Young

Trymaine Lee, Damon Young — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Blacker” and a co-founder of the blog Very Smart Brothas, says he loves leaning into uncomfortable thoughts, and he’s ready to unpack the messy situations of strangers.

So this week on Into America, Damon joins Trymaine to talk about this new venture, what qualifies him to give advice, some of the worst advice he’s ever received, and what his conversations around race look like now. He and Trymaine also answer some burning questions from listeners.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Climate Denial is Racist

Trymaine Lee, Mary Annaïse Heglar — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 finally got on board, the United States has done little to address the climate crisis in recent decades, especially as Republicans continue to either deny that climate change exists, or refuse to take action.

Mary Annaïse Heglar, a writer and co-host of the climate podcast Hot Take, argues that this inaction is rooted in racism. This week on Into America, Heglar and host Trymaine Lee discuss the links between climate change and white supremacy. They also dig into a dangerous ideology that is growing in popularity on the far-right called eco-fascism, where adherents believe that the only way to solve climate change is to stop immigration, and even kill Black and brown people.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Gen Z Midterm Test

Trymaine Lee, Auriel Goodall, William Morris, Monique Vaz — Thu, 4 Aug 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 recent graduates from Spelman, Morehouse, and Clark Atlanta about what it’s been like living through these past few years, their own political involvement on their college campuses, and what they hope this new chapter of electoral politics will bring to the city and state they call home.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Pregnancy, Prison, and the End of Roe

Trymaine Lee, Pamela Winn, Marva Sadler, Dr. Carolyn Sufrin — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 RestoreHER after suffering a miscarriage while serving time in a Georgia prison. She’s now fighting for laws that will help protect incarcerated pregnant women. And we check back in with Texas healthcare provider Marva Sadler about how the recent Supreme Court decision is already impacting women in her state.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

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Buffalo’s Road to Recovery

Trymaine Lee, Fragrance Harris Stanfield, Pastor Tim Newkirk, Henry Taylor — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 months, dealing another blow to the hard-hit community. For years, Tops was the only supermarket in an area that’s otherwise a food desert. It's opening in 2003 marked the culmination of a years-long push from community members, after decades of disinvestment.

As the community continues to heal and forge a path forward, Into America travels to Buffalo to speak with Buffalo natives Fragrance Harris Stanfield, who was working at Tops the day of the shooting, and Pastor Tim Newkirk, a community activist who was involved in the original push to bring a full-service grocery store to his community.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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It's Not Supposed To Happen Here

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 spiked since the pandemic. Experts told Into America that in Indianapolis, the demographics of victims are shifting, and survivors are becoming more likely to be older people and women, like Kim Tillman. It’s also creeping into neighborhoods like Northwest Indianapolis that are usually untouched.

Most of the nation’s attention on gun violence is focused on mass shootings and homicides, but the vast majority of people who are shot survive. And like Kim and Lance, who were among the nearly 750 Indianapolis residents who were wounded by gun violence in 2021, these survivors not only must heal their physical wounds, but face a number of challenges and unexpected hurdles – from healthcare costs, damage to property, and navigating victim compensation funds – as the family tries to heal.

A little over a year later after the shooting, host Trymaine Lee visited Lance and his wife Sophia Stevens, and grandma Kim Tillman at the Stevens’ home in Indianapolis, to talk about recovery, acceptance, and moving forward after tragedy.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

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To All My Sons

Trymaine Lee, Shaka Senghor — Thu, 7 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 years apart. Shaka’s oldest son grew up without him present – he was born six months after Shaka entered prison for a murder he committed when he was 19. His younger son was born after Shaka was released, and he grew up with a father who was a successful author and constant loving presence in his life. The book traces Shaka’s journey as a Black man in America and aims to unpack the toxic and misguided messages about masculinity, mental health, love, and success that boys learn from an early age.

This week on Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks with author and activist Shaka Senghor about fatherhood and how we teach our sons to be men.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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Get Your Freaknik On

Trymaine Lee, Uncle Luke, Sharon Toomer, Maurice Hobson — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000

“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 Outkast, Goodie Mob and Uncle Luke.

“It was the perfect storm. You know, it could not happen anywhere else. It had to happen in Atlanta,” rap legend Uncle Luke tells Trymaine Lee. At one point, Luke was crowned “King of Freaknik.”

This week, Into America explores the rise and fall of the greatest block party America has ever seen, and the impact that Freaknik still has on Atlanta and Black youth culture today, told by the people who lived it, including Uncle Luke, Maurice Hobson, radio host Kenny Burns, and Freaknik co-founder Sharon Toomer.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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Pride and the Bible Belt

Trymaine Lee, Quentin Bell, Lynda Blackmon Lowery — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 a decade. And as he told Trymaine Lee, “Black liberation means the liberation of all Black people, regardless of gender, regardless of orientation, regardless of spirituality.”

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine visits Selma to learn about Quentin’s work. And he speaks with Lynda Blackmon Lowery, one of the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, about how the fight for queer rights today is carrying on the legacy of the activists of her generation.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Fathers of the Movement

Trymaine Lee, Tracy Martin, Jacob Blake Sr., Michael Brown Sr. — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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, Dream Defenders, and Black Youth Project sprouted all over the country, signaling a new era of Black organizing. These groups helped lay down the groundwork for the massive and enduring protests that erupted in Ferguson, Mo., in the days and months after Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed Black teenager, was killed by a white police officer on August 9, 2014.

Within this larger movement for Black lives, the fathers of countless slain Black boys rose up to lead the cause. On this episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks with Tracy Martin, Trayvon Martin’s dad, along with Michael Brown Sr., and Jacob Blake Sr. about the weight of Black fatherhood amid a global fight for Black life.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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ENCORE: Big Daddy Kane’s Lyrical Legacy (2021)

MS NOW — Thu, 9 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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,’” and “Smooth Operator.” He came up alongside the late great Biz Markie, and joined up with Marley Marl and the Juice Crew, establishing himself as one of the pioneers of the golden age of hip-hop.

As we approach the 2022 summer season, we want to revisit our conversation with Big Daddy Kane. Trymaine Lee spoke with Kane about those early days in Brooklyn, what he can offer today’s rappers, and what the forthcoming Universal Hip-Hop Museum could mean for Black culture.

(Original release date: August 19, 2021)

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Space to Grieve

Trymaine Lee, Michael McBride — Thu, 2 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 church and community organizations to work on some of the biggest systemic issues of our times: mass incarceration, gun violence, police reform. Regarded as a national faith leader, McBride took part in the Ferguson uprisings and the many that followed. And today, he continues to lend training and support to young people and religious organizations working towards Black liberation.

On this episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks with Pastor McBride about how to soothe the enduring grief of this moment and what we can do to push onwards.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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The Revolution Will Be Digitized

Trymaine Lee, Marc Lamont Hill — Thu, 26 May 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Floyd and the uprising it sparked. Video of Floyd’s murder was captured by Darnella Frazier, using her cell phone’s camera. She posted the video to Facebook, where it quickly went viral, sparking the largest protest movement in U.S. history.

On this episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks with fellow journalist and author Marc Lamont Hill about his new book, George Floyd, and the uses of technology and social media in the fight for racial justice.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Hate and Heartbreak in Buffalo

Trymaine Lee, India Walton — Thu, 19 May 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 pundits, and even politicians.

And in the wake of this recent extremism, the Black community in Buffalo is left trying to survive the grieve.

“There are no words. There are no solutions. There is no consolation. The community's reeling. Somebody walked into a grocery store and shot up a bunch of our grannies and aunties,” says India Walton, a community leader and former mayoral candidate in Buffalo. India speaks with Trymaine Lee about the shooting, the structural racism and white violence in Buffalo that has kept Black residents segregated and vulnerable, and how she will continue to fight for her community.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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Patrisse Cullors on Making Mistakes

Trymaine Lee, Patrisse Cullors — Thu, 12 May 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 millions of dollars to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. But it’s been a turbulent ride. In 2021, when it was announced that the foundation had received $90 million in funding, many local BLM chapters and families of victims of police violence, started calling for more support and financial transparency. And a recent New York Magazine article unveiled that the foundation spent $6 million on a Los Angeles home which triggered new accusations of mishandling of funds.

This week on Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the former executive director of the BLM Global Network Foundation. After the national foundation received an influx of money, Cullors became the face of the foundation. Now she’s under fire from right-wing media, as well as other movement leaders, who are questioning her leadership and financial decisions. Cullors admits that she has made some mistakes, but she maintains that she has done nothing wrong. So she’s sitting down with Into America to talk about what accountability means to her, and how she plans to move forward with the lessons she’s learned.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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My Dad, Rodney King

Trymaine Lee, Lora King — Thu, 5 May 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 also stunned by the video of four white police officers brutally beating Rodney King. A year later, on April 29, 1992, all four officers were acquitted and the Black community of South Los Angeles reached its breaking point. The acquittal set off five days of violence, destruction, and looting, with Koreatown being the main target.

Now, 30 years later, several Black and Korean communities are commemorating the anniversary of the riots by reflecting on the past, and moving forward together.

This week on Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with Rodney King’s daughter, Lora King, about her relationship with her father and how she’s continuing his legacy through the Rodney King Foundation.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

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UPDATE: Inside a Texas Abortion Clinic

Trymaine Lee — Wed, 4 May 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 people, could create a dangerous situation for Black people forced to carry pregnancies to term.

Last fall, Into America took a closer look at the disparate impact abortion restrictions would have in Texas, following the state’s passage of SB-8, which banned abortion after six weeks. In light of the news this week, we’re re-airing this episode as we consider all that’s at stake with this upcoming decision.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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UPDATE: Ebony & Ivy

Trymaine Lee — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Blackest Ivy League schools, Black students still make up just 11 percent of the student body. And it’s estimated that less than a third of its Black students are descended from people in enslaved the US.

With the release of this new report, we wanted to share Trymaine Lee’s conversation with three students from the African diaspora on campus: Mariah Norman, who is a Generational African American, Ife Adedokun, whose parents are Nigerian immigrants, and Kimani Panthier, whose parents immigrated from Jamaica. The group talked about what it’s like to be Black at Harvard and how they want the university to better support them.

(Originally released December 2, 2021)

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How Basquiat Earned His Crown

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 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 the artist’s place in art history? During his lifetime, he struggled to gain acceptance from critics in the predominantly-white art world. And of the more than 800 paintings Basquiat produced in the several years before his untimely death, there are only two of these works available for viewing in a permanent museum collection in New York City. The vast majority of Basquiat works live in private collections, making them hard to access.

This week on Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks with Basquiat’s former bandmate and friend, Michael Holman, about the young artist’s coming of age in 1980s New York. Then we explore the crisis of Basquiat’s archive with American art historian Jordana Saggese. And finally we take a trip to Basquiat’s childhood and speak with Basquiat’s younger sisters, Jeanine Heriveaux and Lisane Basquiat, to unfold their early relationship and a new April 2022 exhibition they are curating in honor of their late brother.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all with the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

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Louisiana’s Last Black Oystermen

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 communities at risk from rising sea levels, and cities like New Orleans more vulnerable to storms. To fight back, the state has created a 50-year, $50 billion plan to save the disappearing land, which includes diverting water from the Mississippi River through the wetlands around Pointe à La Hache, so sediment from the waters can build up along the shorelines.

The state and environmental advocacy groups believe these diversions are the most effective, cost-efficient, and least intrusive solution to save the coast. But oystermen and other fishermen in Pointe à La Hache say the influx of freshwater will disrupt the brackish waters their oysters need to survive.

This week on Into America, we travel to Louisiana to speak with Byron Encalade, a third-generation oysterman from Pointe à La Hache, and founder of the Louisiana Oystermen Association, a mostly Black union that represents oystermen of color. Encalade and other Black oystermen have been hit time and again, from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to the 2010 BP oil spill, but Encalade says these diversion plans will destroy what’s left of Pointe à La Hache.

But not all is lost yet. Keslyn and Derrayon Williams, shrimper brothers and owners of Lil Wig’s Seafood and Catering Boat, are still fighting for their family's legacy. They grew up in Pointe à La Hache and remember it as a thriving economic fishing community. Now, they have to travel hours away and compete with bigger boats just to catch shrimp. Derrayon believes if the state stopped these diversions, their community could be restored, but Kelsyn thinks it might be too late.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

Read Trymaine’s reporting on this topic from the New York Times
Into Dirty Air

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Is Black Crypto Freedom? Or Fad?

Trymaine Lee, Lamar Wilson, Jared Ball, Tavonia Evans — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Evans.

But while some people see freedom and opportunity, others, likeDr. Jared Ball of Morgan State University, worry that crypto is volatile and speculative, and warn that this new space is not the place to build Black wealth.

This week on Into America, Trymaine Lee dives into the world of Black crypto users, to understand the promises, the hype, the potential drawbacks, and ultimately, whether crypto could equal freedom for Black folks in this country.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Emmett Till's Cousin Remembers

Trymaine Lee, Rev. Wheeler Parker — Thu, 7 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 sidelines and into the fight to recognize Black Americans’ basic humanity.

Congress first considered antilynching legislation at the turn of the twentieth century. On January 20th, 1900, Representative George Henry White of North Carolina, the only Black member of Congress at the time, introduced a bill that would have subjected people involved in mob violence to the potential of capital punishment. Since then, antilynching legislation has been introduced in Congress more than 200 times. It had failed every time.

That changed last week. At the end of March, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law, making lynching a federal hate crime. Present at the ceremony was Emmett Till’s cousin, Rev. Wheeler Parker. Rev. Parker travelled from Chicago to Mississippi with Emmett Till in 1955, and he is the last living relative to have witnessed the boy’s kidnapping. This week on Into America, he shares his story.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all with the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

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(Not) Chasing Oscar Gold

Trymaine Lee, Stefon Bristol — Fri, 1 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 all-Black producing team, led by FAMU alum Will Packer.

But the Oscars have a troubled history with race. In 1940 Hattie McDaniel became the first Black person to win an Oscar, for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind. After a tearful acceptance speech, she returned to her seat at the edge of the auditorium where the ceremony was held, segregated from her white peers. It would be nearly a quarter century before another Black actor won an Oscar, when Sidney Poitier took home the prize for Best Actor in 1964. With last weekend’s awards included, a total of 22 Oscars have gone to Black actors during the Academy’s 94-year history.

But do we really need an organization like the Academy to tell us how great we are?

The entertainment industry is full of Black creatives making their own way, producing the stories that they want to tell, on their own terms. This week on Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks to one of them, filmmaker Stefon Bristol, the man behind See You Yesterday about what it takes to make it in Hollywood while staying true to yourself.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Please follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all with the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

Editor's Note: in an earlier version of this episode an editing error changed the meaning of one part of the interview. Stefon Bristol's short film of See You Yesterday was accepted, and was a finalist at the 2017 American Black Film Festival.

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Was Will Smith Protecting Black Women?

Trymaine Lee, Jamira Burley — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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. The first thing that he said in his tearful five-minute acceptance speech was that “Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” and he went on to talk about “protecting” the Black women who co-starred in King Richard with him.

Since Sunday the internet has been abuzz with reaction. Commentators like Eric Deggans and Craig Melvin have condemned Smith’s actions. But many saw an act of chivalry, with people like actress Tiffany Haddish and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley praising what they viewed as Smith’s defense of his wife.

So what does it actually mean to protect Black women? And is physical violence ever an acceptable response to verbal abuse? This week on Into America, activist Jamira Burley weighs in.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Please follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all with the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

We Gotta Talk About Kanye West
Hear Jamira’s early appearance on the show: Into the DNC and Black Lives

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We Gotta Talk About Kanye West

Trymaine Lee, Maia Hoskin, Rwenshaun Miller — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 wasn’t ready to let go, and over the last year, his efforts to win Kim back have become increasingly aggressive. When she started dating SNL star Pete Davidson, Kanye’s public displays took on a more menacing tone: he made a music video featuring an animation of himself decapitating the comedian and claimed that he was using art to work through the trauma of his breakup.

Kanye has been very vocal about his struggles with mental health, sharing his diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder with the world. His current public displays look to many like the hallmark signs of a manic episode, where a person feels an unnaturally high energy level, excitement, and euphoria for a prolonged period. And many say his behavior toward Kim appears to bullying and harassing, bordering on abuse. (Although to be clear, the majority of people with mental health issues are not violent, and we want to be careful not to equate mental illness with violent or threatening behavior; and there is no evidence that Kanye has been violent.)

But the media conversations around Kim and Kanye, and around Kanye’s mental health, too often take on a tone of tabloid gossip, rather than tackling the tougher issues of mental health, support, and accountability that their story highlights.

This week on Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks with two Black mental health professionals about Kanye’s struggles and mental health in the Black community. Dr. Maia Hoskin is a college professor, activist and writer who holds a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Clinical Supervision. Last month she published a Medium article arguing that Black women shouldn’t be expected to “save” or “fix” Kanye’s mental health issues. Rwenshaun Miller is a therapist, speaker and award-winning social entrepreneur. His company Eustress, Inc. is focused on raising mental health awareness in the Black community.

For a transcript, please visit msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Please follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all with the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

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Black in the USSR

Trymaine Lee, Eniola Oladiti, Kimberly St. Julian Varnon — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 from the African diaspora facing racist treatment at the Ukrainian border. In the eastern city of Sumy, home to a large contingent of international students, Black folks were beaten off of trains and buses fleeing the violence to make way for white Ukrainian citizens.

This week on Into America, we speak with Eniola Oladiti, a Black medical student from Ireland, who fled Sumy while that city was under siege. And host Trymaine Lee speaks with Kimberly St. Julian Varnon, an expert on race in the former Soviet Union, about the unique experience of being Black in this part of the world.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Viewing:

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The Re-Freshed Prince of Bel-Air

Trymaine Lee, Morgan Cooper, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Cassandra Freeman — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Within 24 hours of posting his project online, Cooper got a call from Westbrook, the production company owned by Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith. Will Smith had seen the video, liked what he saw, and wanted to know what Cooper’s plans were. In short order, Smith flew Cooper to Miami, where he was filming Bad Boys III.

The two met, and Will Smith signed on to Cooper’s vision, reimagining The Fresh Prince with a much more dramatic tone. They shopped the idea around and found a home at Peacock, NBC’s steaming service. Morgan Cooper was kept on as a writer, executive producer and director for the new series.

This week on Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks with Morgan Cooper about Bel-Air, the creative decisions he’s making with the show, and his lightning quick rise in Hollywood. Trymaine also speaks with actress Cassandra Freeman, who plays Aunt Viv in the new show, as well as hip hop icon DJ Jazzy Jeff, who played Jazz on the original Fresh Prince, and who now hosts Bel-Air: The Official Podcast.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

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Further Reading and Viewing:

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Sista SCOTUS

Trymaine Lee, Kim Tignor, April Reign — Thu, 3 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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, Biden announced Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his pick.

Before a candidate was even named, members of the right began crying foul, pre-judging the eventual nominee as an “affirmative action” pick. They contended that, because Biden was pledging to nominate a Black woman, he was excluding more qualified candidates. But these attacks glossed over historical context: in the court’s 232-year history, there have been a total of 115 justices to serve. 108 of those justices have been white men – it's been a case of affirmative action for white men, by white men. And past heroes of the right, like Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan have made similar pledges about appointing women to the court without any pushback from those same corners.

While Biden kept his word with nominating Judge Jackson to the Court, it was never a sure bet. From the time he took office, Biden faced organized pressure from a dynamic group of Black women aiming to make the highest court in the land more closely resemble the face of America. April Reign is a trained lawyer and the creator of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. She, Kim Tignor, and two other Black women lawyers created the organization Sista SCOTUS and the campaign #SheWillRise to keep pressure on in Washington for this historic first.

This week, host Trymaine Lee talks with Reign and Tignor about their campaign.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

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Reconstructed, Ep 4: The Book of Trayvon

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Kidada Williams, a history professor at Wayne State University tells Trymaine Lee that she sees a clear through line between Reconstruction and Trayvon Martin.

“The way he was targeted for minding his own business, the way he was demonized, and in some cases blamed for his own [death] is very consistent with what happened during Reconstruction,” she explains.

Like Emmett Till before him, Trayvon’s story galvanized a people and changed a nation. Protests sprang up across the country as the story gained traction, helped in large part by Trymaine Lee’s reporting. A generation of young people became activists, and when the man who killed Trayvon was acquitted, arguing he acted in self-defense, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” was born and became a rallying cry.

Without Trayvon, there would have been no groundwork for the uprisings in Ferguson after Michael Brown was killed, no global movement in place to fuel the protests for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

But when Trayvon became a face of the movement, it came with a cost — one that Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father, knows too well.

"I’m giving to society, but do society really understand what I've given up?” he asks. "We don't look to bury our kids. We don't look to eulogize them or try to define what their legacy is to be. And during that process, man, it just, it really tears you up.”

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Further Listening:

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Reconstructed, Ep 3: Keep the Faith, Baby

Trymaine Lee, Spencer Crew, Kidada Williams, Bree Newsome Bass — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 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 Reconstruction, they rebuilt.

Mother Emanuel’s history mirrors the story of Black America. Through the centuries, faith has helped Black people find freedom, community, and strength, even in the face of violence.

In episode three of ‘Reconstructed,’ Into America explores the legacy of faith through Reconstruction. Historian Kidada Williams shares testimonies of the devastating violence and terrorism that white people inflicted upon their Black neighbors. And Spencer Crew, co-curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s exhibit on Reconstruction, explains how faith and the church were vital to the survival of newly freed people.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

Editors’ note: This episode was originally published incorrectly naming the location of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing as Montgomery, Alabama. The correct location is Birmingham. The piece has been updated.

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Reconstructed, Ep 2: In Search of the Promised Land

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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.

In the second episode of Reconstructed, Into America continues its deep dive into Reconstruction, collaborating with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. We explore how across the South, Black Americans began acquiring land to secure autonomy, protection, generational wealth, and community. Often, they were operating on property that had been owned by their former enslavers.

Promised Land, South Carolina was one of those communities. Founded just after the Civil War in the Upcountry region, Promised Land was self-sufficient, with a church, school, and farms to nourish its people’s mind and body. In a visit to the town, Trymaine Lee talks to Reverend Willie Neal Norman Jr. and Elestine Smith Norman, a couple who can trace their Promised Lands roots back over a century.

And Into America travels to rural Georgia to learn about a group of 19 families who bought several hundred acres in 2020 with the dream of creating a new town: Freedom.

“Freedom is the answer to our ancestors’ prayers,” co-founder Ashley Scott tells Trymaine. “Going forward and building Freedom is in honor of the blood, the sweat, the tears that they laid down for us in the past.”

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

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Reconstructed, Ep 1: Birth of a Black Nation

Trymaine Lee, Spencer Crew, Michael Boulware Moore, Jaime Harrison — Thu, 3 Feb 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 artifacts to bring the history of the era to life. Over four episodes, ‘Reconstructed’ will explore how after the Civil War, Black Americans gained citizenship and political power, planted roots and formed communities on newly acquired land, and how the newly freed drew on their faith to carry them through violent white backlash.

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 power.

Perhaps no one exemplifies this more than the lateCongressman Robert Smalls. As his great-great-grandson Michael Boulware Moore tells Trymaine Lee, Smalls’ daring escape from slavery and wartime actions made him a hero. Then, like hundreds of newly freed Black Americans, he decided to get involved in politics in his hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina.

Smalls helped found the state’sRepublican Party in 1868 and served in the state legislature, where he crafted laws to create the first free compulsory public school system in the country. In 1874, he was elected to the US House of Representatives, where he remained for five terms.

Not long after Smalls left office, much of the progress of Reconstruction had been undone by a combination of white violence, Northern apathy, and severe voting restrictions aimed at Black Americans.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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ENCORE: Harlem on My Mind, Ep 1: Jacob Lawrence (2021)

MS NOW — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 Black in America today.

The story began in December 2020, when host Trymaine Lee acquired something he coveted for years: a numbered print titled Schomburg Library by American icon Jacob Lawrence. The print came with a handwritten dedication to a man named Abram Hill. Who was Abram Hill? How did he know Jacob Lawrence? Did their paths cross at the famed Schomburg Library?

What followed was a journey of discovery, through conversations with friends, historians and experts, to understand the interconnected lives of Black creators in and around the Harlem Renaissance. And it started with Jacob Lawrence, a child of the Great Migration who was nurtured by the great artists and ideas of the period. Two women who knew Lawrence well, art historian Dr. Leslie King-Hammond and artist Barbara Earl Thomas, reflected on his life, death and contributions to Black culture.

As Into America gears up for our 2022 Black History series, Reconstructed – a look at the legacy of the Reconstruction era –we wanted to revisit Harlem on My Mind and share it with you again.

Special thanks to the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

(Original release date: February 4, 2021)

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One Year In, Has Biden Had Our Backs?

Trymaine Lee, Yamiche Alcindor — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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-thin majority, and an evenly divided Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris provides Democrats with the tie-breaking vote.

Biden’s election win, as well as his party’s control of Congress, would not have been possible withoutBlack voters. After a late entry into the 2020 race, and a poor showing in early contests,61 percent of Black Democrats in South Carolina chose Biden in their state’s primary, breathing life into his nascent campaign. In the general election, Blacks in urban centers helped Biden secure wins in key swing states. And in Georgia that year, record turnout and Black voters helped Biden win the state’s Electoral College votes and send two Democrats to the Senate, giving the president’s party control of the chamber.

In his victory speech back in November of 2020, Biden recognized the debt that he and his party owed to the Black voters who put them in power, pledging to have the community’s back. But progress on key legislation has been slow. Both the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and theEmmett Till Anti-Lynching Act are stalled in the Senate. And the same goes for the party’s efforts at voting rights legislation.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks with NBC News Washington correspondent Yamiche Alcindor about how Joe Biden’s pledge to the Black community is holding up one year into his administration, and what things look like moving forward.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

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“The Sun Rises in The East”

Trymaine Lee, Fela Barclift, Tayo Giwa, Cynthia Gordy Giwa — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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 African teachings, a food cooperative, a publishing house, music and dance programs, and a world-famous jazz club. Even though the organization no longer exists, many can still feel the spirit of The Eastin Central Brooklyn today.

So, when Black-Owned Brooklyn founders, Tayo Giwa and Cynthia Gordy Giwa heard about The East through word of mouth at Brooklyn’s Annual African Arts Festival, they knew it was a story that needed to be told to the masses.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine speaks with Tayo and Cynthia about their upcoming documentary, “The Sun Rises in The East”, which tells the story of this self-sufficient community. They talk about the film and the seeds planted by The East throughoutBrooklyn today. Trymaine also speaks with Fela Barclift, a former member of The East and co-founder of Afro-centric childhood center, Little Sun People. She talks about the power of the movement and what The East meant to her as an educator.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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The Far-Right Isn’t All White

Trymaine Lee, Joe Lowndes — Fri, 7 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000

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, leader of the Proud Boys, one of the most prominent far-right groups at the Capitol that day, describes himself as Afro-Cuban. These are just two Black voices in a far-right movement that has become increasingly multiracial, despite that very movement being beholden to ideals of white supremacy.

Joe Lowndes is a professor of political science at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on right-wing extremism, populism and racial politics. He says these movements are less rural and white than they once were, and tells Trymaine Lee why leaders from across the political spectrum need to pay attention.

Please follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all with the handle @intoamericapod.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

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The Face of Anti-Fascism

Trymaine Lee, Daryle Lamont Jenkins — Thu, 6 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000

It’s been one year since a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC. They were attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election win by preventing theCongressional certification of his victory.

As the attack on the Capitol unfolded, people on the internet immediately began to identify rioters and widely share details about them. Many of the rioters were fired from their jobs or even arrested.

This practice is called doxxing. And using it to chase down far-right extremists became popular through a man named Daryle Lamont Jenkins.Jenkins is a self-described anti-fascist and the founder of One People’s Project. For over 20 years, Jenkins and his organization have used the internet to expose and publicly shame white supremacists.

His work has brought him into direct contact with white supremacists at events like the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA, as well as with Black members of the far-right.

This week on Into America, host Trymaine Lee speaks with Jenkins about his fight to take on and put a stop to right-wing extremists.

Please follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all with the handle @intoamericapod.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

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Where Are They Now?

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Over the last year and a half, Into America has met some extraordinary people who have shared with us some equally extraordinary stories, but where are they now?

On this episode of Into America, we speak with some of our past guests who shaped our show and helped us make better sense of the world around us.

We catch up with old friends like Eric Deggans, who had to figure out how to coordinate his mother’s funeral after her death at the beginning of the pandemic.We speak with activist Jeneisha Harris, who recently changed her mind on gun ownership after a frightenin gincident, and we check in on our good friend, Christopher Martin to see how he is doing after the one-year anniversary of George Floyd. We also talk with two of our favorite business owners, Adija Smith of the Milwaukee bakery Confectionately Yours, and Eddie Lewis III, who was counting on COVID debt relief to save his family’s sugarcane farm in Louisiana.

Like many of our guests and the rest of the world, our show has evolved, and we want to take this time to reflect and thank you, the listeners, for coming on this journey with us.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Take a Look, it's in a (Banned) Book

Trymaine Lee, Jerry Craft, Nola Lee — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Jerry Craft’s graphic novel New Kid has won multiple awards, made the New York Times Best Sellers List, and is beloved by children across the country.But this year, New Kid made headlines for a different reason when a Texas school district pulled the book from its shelves after a white parent complained that it promoted Critical Race Theory and Marxism.

Craft was surprised. The story is based on his own experiences as a young Black kid attending a mostly white private school in New York City. “I had to Google Critical Race Theory and try to find out how I was, how I was teaching it,” he tells Into America.

New Kid was born in part because Craft felt that stories about Black kids tend to dwell on trauma instead of normal life. "I just wanted to have kids where the biggest dilemma in their life is if they wanted to play PlayStation or Xbox, or what movie they wanted to go see, you know, as opposed to always having the weight of the world,” he says. “Those are important stories, but I think we have to give kids things to aspire to and to dream."

The school district reinstated New Kid after a review, but the ordeal raised old questions about what kind of books are challenged in schools, and who gets to decide what is appropriate for children.

Host Trymaine Lee’s 9-year-old daughter Nola read New Kid for her summer reading, and she loved it. Trymaine brings her on the show to talk about the book and representation in children’s literature.

“I mean, obviously, if you grow up in a world where you see yourself, that might tell you like, I can't do this, I'm not able to do this, or I'm not capable of this,” she tells her dad. “So I think that in general, just seeing people that look like you and representation as a whole is very important.”

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Please follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all with the handle @intoamericapod.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Le Petit Problème Noir

Trymaine Lee, Ricki Stevenson, Rokhaya Diallo — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000

In the 1920s, Josephine Baker escaped the violent racism of in the United States to seek refuge in Paris, like so many other Black American creatives have done over time. Baker found that France welcomed her, and the freedom she found there helped her become an international sensation in dancing, singing, and acting.

Baker eventually became not only a French citizen but a decorated hero in the French Resistance during World War II. She also continued to speak out against racism in her home country, and was the only woman on the official speakers list at the 1963 March on Washington.

All of this helped Baker become the first Black woman, first American, and first entertainer inducted into the Panthéon in Paris, one of the greatest honors bestowed in France. On this episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee talks about the significance of this honor with Ricki Stevenson, a Black American whose own move to Paris in the 1990s was inspired by Baker, and who has been fighting for more recognition for Baker here in the States.

During the induction ceremony last month, French President Emmanuel Macron called Baker “ever fair, ever fraternal, ever fraternal, and ever French,” and held her up as a shining example of French universalism: “Being Black didn’t take precedence over being American or French. She was not fighting in the name of a Black cause, no she was fighting to be a free citizen, one who lived in dignity and completely free.”

But France’s relationship with race is much more complicated than that. Rokhaya Diallo, a French journalist, author, and activist, tells Into America that Macron’s words dilute Baker’s own contributions to civil rights, and also obscure the racism that Black French people like her experience on a daily basis.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

EDITOR’S NOTE: After this episode published, we did hear back from a representative of the French Embassy in Washington, DC. Visit our website to read a summary of their statement.

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Rev. Sharpton, Ben Crump, and the Pursuit of Justice

Ben Crump, Trymaine Lee, Rev. Al Sharpton — Thu, 9 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Looking back on 2021, it felt like maybe Black Americans got closer to knowing justice.In April, Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd. And the day before Thanksgiving, three white men were found guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery.

But 2021 wasn’t all about victories.

Last month, a jury in Wisconsin cleared Kyle Rittenhouse of multiple homicide charges after he shot and killed two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. Rittenhouse, who says he brought a semi-automatic rifle to the protest to “protect property,” successfully argued that he fired his weapon in self-defense.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee is joined by two of today’s most prominent civil rights leaders to explore whether Black people in this country can ever experience true justice.

Reverend Al Sharpton, the founder of the National Action Network and host on MSNBC, says while there were setbacks, there was plenty to celebrate in 2021. “I think that we ought to mark those victories we get, so people will know we're not fighting alone.”

Attorney Ben Crump, who represented both families of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd this year, agrees. “We're continuously on this journey. We take sometimes some steps forward and then there are going to be steps back.” But the guilty verdicts this year, he says, "give us hope for America.”

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Listening:

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Ebony & Ivy

Trymaine Lee, Mariah Norman, Ife Adedokun, Kimani Panthier, Camille Z. Charles — Thu, 2 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Although Harvard is one of the Blackest Ivy League schools, Black students still make up just 11 percent of the student body. Many Black students at Harvard experience a level of culture shock when they first arrive to such a historically white space. There’s the whiteness of the university today, but also the institution’s connection to slavery and white supremacy.

This culture shock can be doubled for Black students who trace their lineage to enslaved people in this country, often called Generational African Americans at Harvard.Even though the university has started an initiative to address and understand its ties to slavery, and has made increasing diversity on campus a priority for decades, it’s estimated that less than a third of Black students at Harvard are Generational African Americans.

But in its publicly released demographics, Harvard doesn’t distinguish between the different kinds of Blackness within the diaspora. And Black students say that’s an issue.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with three studentsfrom the African diaspora on campus: Mariah Norman, a first year who is Generational African American, Ife Adedokun, a first year whose parents immigrated from Nigeria, and Kimani Panthier, a second year whose parents immigrated from Jamaica.

The group talks about what it’s like to be Black at Harvard,and the nuances of Black identity within the diaspora on campus. They tell Trymaine how the university could better support them, and how they find community from each other.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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A Word from the Nap Bishop

Trymaine Lee, Tricia Hersey — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000

When Tricia Hersey was in seminary school, she was exhausted. On top of classes and homework, she had a job and a child. She often wouldn’t get to sleep until 2am, and her grades were suffering. Then, one day, as she was researching histories of enslaved people and Black liberation, she had an idea: instead of running herself into the ground, what if she took a nap instead?

That decision turned into a practice of rest in her own life, and then Tricia started sharing it with her community. Soon, her seminary background and her work on rest melded together and in 2016, Tricia founded the Nap Ministry, and became the Nap Bishop.

This week on Into America, Tricia tells Trymaine Lee about how she is helping Black people renounce white supremacist and capitalist ideas of work and reclaim rest as radical resistance.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Changing the Narrative, with Nikole Hannah-Jones

Trymaine Lee, Nikole Hannah-Jones — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000

The 1619 Project was a career-defining moment for New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. Released as a standalone issue of the Times Magazine in August 2019, the project sought to reframe the American narrative, linking our country’s founding to the arrival of the first enslaved Africans on the shores of Virginia.

When the project was initially released it was widely praised as a much-needed corrective to a white-washed version of American history. But there was also pushback from the likes of then-President Trump and Fox News. And some of that pushback was downright nasty.

This week, Penguin Random House is releasing the 1619 Project as a book, audiobook and children’s book. Into America’s Trymaine Lee is one of the book’s contributors. He and Nikole Hannah-Jones sat down to talk about the way the project has shaped America, how it’s shaped her, and the power of changing the narrative.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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The Forgotten POW

Trymaine Lee, Shoshana Johnson — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000

In the first year of the Iraq War, seven soldiers were captured and held prisoner by the Iraqi forces for 22 days. Two of them were women. One was Private First Class Jessica Lynch, whose story of heroism was praised in national headlines when she returned to America. The other woman was Specialist Shoshana Johnson, America’s first Black female prisoner of war. Except you might not remember her.

The two women are friends, and both risked their lives for this country, suffering significant injuries. But the national spotlight on Lynch’s story left Johnson’s heroism overlooked and unrecognized.

On Veterans Day, Trymaine Lee speaks with Shoshana Johnson about her traumatic capture and rescue, her life after the war, and how she wants the military to honor the sacrifices of women of color who wear the uniform.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Justice4Garvey

Trymaine Lee, Julius Garvey — Thu, 4 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

In the early 20th century, the Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey led the largest movement Black people in the world. Through his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Garvey preached about the great history of Black culture and called on Black people around the world to unite to create an “Africa for Africans.”

But like so many Black leaders, Garvey's fame and power during his lifetime attracted enemies in the white establishment, including J. Edgar Hoover, who was a young agent at the precursor to the FBI. Hoover felt threatened by Garvey, and by 1923, under murky circumstances, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to prison. A few years later, President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence, on the condition that the government deport him back to his home country of Jamaica.

But the conviction against Marcus Garvey stands to this day. For years, his family has been trying to get Garvey a posthumous pardon. This week on Into America, Trymaine Lee talks with Dr. Julius Garvey, Marcus Garvey’s only surviving son, about his father's life, legacy, and Justice4Garvey, the movement to clear the Garvey name.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts.

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Boston is Blacker Than You Think

Andrea Campbell, Dart Adams, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Boston maintains a reputation as one of the most racist cities in America, despite its long abolitionist history and image as a bastion of East Coast liberalism. And in many ways that reputation is well-earned. From the city’s staggering racial wealth gap, to its violent backlash against school desegregation in the 1970’s, to racial epithets hurled at Black athletes to this day, there’s plenty of evidence to back up the assertion that Beantown is racist. But often left out of the conversation are the voices of Black Bostonians themselves.

Writer, historian and Boston native Dart Adams is on a mission to change that. Dart leads walking tours in the city, highlighting overlooked aspects of Black Boston’s past and present. He recently wrote an article arguing that Black Bostonians are caught in the middle of the debate over their city’s racism. At home they face erasure in Boston’s media landscape, as well as the injustices that Black folks everywhere navigate in dealing with systemic racism. But they also face friendly fire from Black folks outside the city when they try to bring a level of nuance to the conversation which outsiders lack.

This week on Into America, Dart Adams gives Trymaine Lee an insider’s view of Black Boston, from the city’s rich musical history to its role as home to some of the greatest Black leaders in civil rights history during their formative years. He also gives us a sense of what it’s like to love a city that doesn’t always love you back.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Jazmine Sullivan’s Fight Against Breast Cancer

Trymaine Lee, Jazmine Sullivan — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000

BET’s Album of the Year winner Jazmine Sullivan is one of the biggest names in R&B music, but her world stopped back in 2019 when she found out her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sullivan turned from singing, to taking care of her mom. And over time, she started learning about the racial disparities with disease, like the fact that Black women in the US are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women.

Since then, Sullivan has been using her platform to start conversations about health with her fans; and she’s partnering with a new initiative called More Than Just Words-- a campaign aimed at helping Black women recognize the signs of breast cancer, get early screenings, and arm them with the tools to have tough conversations with their doctors.

On this week’s episode of Into America, Sullivan sits down with Trymaine Lee to talk about her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis, the journey to recovery, and how Sullivan is using her own experience to help Black women prioritize their health.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Viewing:

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Inside a Texas Abortion Clinic

Marva Sadler, Trymaine Lee, Michele Goodwin — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000

On August 31st, Marva Sadler stood outside the Whole Women’s Health abortion clinic in Fort Worth, Texas, and vowed to help as many people as she could before the end of the day. Along with a small staff, Sadler and a physician performed 67 abortions before midnight. The next day, the nation’s strictest abortion ban went into effect.

The law, known as SB-8, bans nearly all abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, typically around the sixth week of pregnancy, before most people know they are carrying. SB-8 is facing multiple legal challenges, but its authors designed it to stand up to a challenge before the Supreme Court, by moving the enforcement from the state to private citizens, who can sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion procedure.

So far, the bet has paid off. The Supreme Court let the law take effect in September, and while there’s been recent legal back and forth over the law, it’s still in effect today. In the past six weeks, many pregnant people have sought to get around the ban by crossing state lines or seeking abortion pills online.

On this episode of Into America, Marva Sadler, the clinical director for the Whole Women’s Health network, tells Trymaine Lee that this law will have greater consequences for Black people, who already face higher face higher rates of maternal mortality in Texas.

Michele Goodwin, a law professor at UC Irvine and founding director for the university’s Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy, says the law, with its vigilante nature, is reminiscent of the fugitive slave acts of antebellum America.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening: [[POD ONLY]]:

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The Tax Auction Block

Theresa White, Sará Reynolds Green, Joseph Walters, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 7 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000

With its luxury resorts and golf courses, Hilton Head, South Carolina, is a popular vacation hotspot. But the island is also home to the Gullah Geechee; descendants of formerly enslaved West Africans who have owned land on the island since their ancestors were freed.

However, every year Gullah Geechee families are in danger of losing their land to investors at Beaufort County's tax auction. If a family falls behind on its property taxes, the land goes up for auction; and that can happen for as little as a few-hundred dollars in back-taxes.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with Marine Corp veteran Joseph Walters Jr, who has come close to losing his land two years in a row. And Trymaine talks with members of the Gullah Geechee community who are trying to stop this cycle: Marshview Community Organic Farms owner Sará Reynolds Green, and Pan African Family Empowerment & Land Preservation Network founder Theresa White. Green and White are both part of a network of Gullah advocates raising awareness (and funds) to help people hold onto their land, and the culture that comes with it.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Haiti’s Unforgivable Blackness

Nana Gyamfi, Trymaine Lee, Garry Pierre-Pierre — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000

On September 19th, photographers captured a harrowing scene at the US Mexico border: Border Patrol agents, on horseback, chasing and intimidating a large group of Haitian migrants as they tried to cross into Texas.

The images sparked outrage, and President Joe Biden eventually condemned the actions of the agents. But since that day, the Department of Homeland Security has expelled nearly 4,000 Haitian migrants on 37 flights to Haiti — without giving them a chance to claim asylum — under a Trump-era public health rule designed to protect the US from incoming disease.

Nana Gyamfi, the executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, says that the administration is hiding behind policy, rather than standing up for migrants. And for people like Garry Pierre-Pierre, a Hatian-American journalist who founded the Haitian Times news site, it’s been hard to feel like he’s stuck between his adoptive country and his homeland.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Locked in Hell

Trymaine Lee, Amite Dominick, LaQuita Davis, Susi Vassallo — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Two things are true. Texas is one of the hottest states in the country and climate change is real. Yet, Texas is one of thirteen states that do not have universal air conditioning installed in their state prisons. As climate change gradually makes the state hotter, prisons are forcing their staff and inmates to endure extreme temperatures with little to no relief.

LaQuita Davis, now released on parole, was one of those inmates at Lane Murray women's prison in Gatesville, Texas.It was there that she noticed it getting hotter in the prison. That led to many unbearable days and nights; to the point where she had to soak her clothes in water every half hour to cool down enough to sleep at night.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with Davis about her time in Lane Murray and how she made it through the Texas heat behind bars with no air conditioning.

He also speaks with Dr. Susi Vassallo, a Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at NYU’s Med School, who has been studying the issue of heat in prisons for several years. She talks about the effect of extreme heat on the body and how prison populations are especially vulnerable to heat-related illnesses.

Trymaine also sits down with Amite Dominick, president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, who for years has been fighting for legislation to bring air conditioning to Texas prisons.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Celebrating Black Fashion

J. Alexander Martin, Trymaine Lee, Tracy Reese — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000

As a Black girl in Detroit, Tracy Reese loved making her own clothes and attending the famed Ebony Fashion Fair with her mother. Today, she’s one of the most well-known designers in fashion. Michelle Obama, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Oprah Winfrey have all worn her designs. But getting to this level wasn’t easy.

Reese is part of a long line of Black designers influencing the fashion industry, while navigating a world where they’re often underrepresented and marginalized. But Black designers, creatives, and brands have still found ways to break through the industry and push the culture forward in fashion.

On this episode of Into America, Reeses peaks to Trymaine Lee about her path to becoming a household name. And Lee speaks with J. Alexander Martin, the co-founder of the iconic sportswear line, FUBU — the first clothing line to integrate fashion with hip-hop culture, media, and entertainment. Martin talks about how he and his crew defied the odds by starting a mainstream brand that is "for us, by us."

Reese and Martin took very different, but parallel, paths to make it in the industry. Both faced barriers and pressures to conform, while ultimately learning to move confidently and strut their stuff to become the moguls they are today.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Follow and share the show on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, using the handle @intoamericapod.
Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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The Black Firefighters of 9/11

Kevin Maynard, Trymaine Lee, Paul Washington — Thu, 9 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Every September 11th, people across the country commemorate the emergency service workers and countless civilians who were lost on 9/11. This includes the Vulcan Society, an organization of former and active Black firefighters in New York City, who gather at a memorial every year to remember the 12 Black firefighters who lost their lives.

But many Black firefighters and the families of these fallen heroes feel these men have been overlooked and unrecognized.

On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Trymaine Lee speaks with Kevin Maynard, whosetwin brother Keith was one of the firefighters killed that day. Kevin, who now works for the Houston Fire Department, talks about the brothers’ different paths to becoming firefighters, and his struggles with grief since Keith’s death.

Trymaine also speaks with Captain Paul Washington, the head of Engine 234, a majority Black firehouse in Brooklyn, who was the president of the Vulcan Society during 9/11. Captain Washington talks about how the Vulcan Society pushed for recognition of the Black firefighters who died, and their larger fight for Black representation in the department.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening: [[POD ONLY]]:

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Race and Education in an American Suburb

Mike Hixenbaugh, Antonia Hylton, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 2 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Over the past few decades, families have flocked to the affluent Dallas suburb of Southlake for its top-rated school system. But beneath the manicured lawns and gleaming fountains lie something Black families call “Southlake’s dirty secret."

Less than three years ago, two videos of white Southlake teenagers saying the N-word went viral within a few months of one another. The videos prompted an outpouring of stories from Black parents and students, detailing their own experiences with racism in Southlake. For a time, it seemed like the town was united in taking action to confront the problem.

Then came 2020. As the Black Lives Matter movement picked up steam, so did the backlash. And that backlash threatened to take over the town of Southlake.

This story — and what comes next — is the subject of a new podcast from NBC News called “Southlake.” On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks with Southlake co-hosts Antonia Hylton and Mike Hixenbaugh about how a group of parents and students tried to confront racism in their schools; but instead, got steamrolled by their own community.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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The Essential Kerner Commission Report

Jelani Cobb, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000

In the 1960s, America burned. Black communities’ frustration against racist policies, economic isolation, and police brutality spilled into the streets in cities across the country.Hundreds were killed, many by police, and cities like Newark and Los Angeles were left with tens of millions of dollars in property damages.

In 1967, shortly after the uprising in Detroit, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the creation of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, to investigate the causes of the protests. It would become known as the Kerner Commission, for its chair, Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois.

The panel was mostly white, and all men. But what the commission ultimately found was damning. The Kerner Commission Report, published in 1968, found that white America was responsible for the structural and societal failings that led to the uprisings, famously declaring “white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it. And white society condones it.”

These words, written over 50 years ago, are still relevant today. To some, the words may even seem radical.

That’s why New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb decided to edit and publish a new version of the findings, called“The Essential Kerner Commission Report.” Trymaine Lee sat down with Jelani at a special New York Public Library event to talk about the re-released report, the discarded recommendations, and why the report is crucial to understanding America today.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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Big Daddy Kane’s Lyrical Legacy

Trymaine Lee, Big Daddy Kane — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Trymaine talks with Kane about those early days in Brooklyn, what he can offer today’s rappers, and what the forthcoming Universal Hip-Hop Museum could mean for Black culture.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

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Freedom in the Final Round

Dewey Bozella, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Dewey Bozella was 18 years old when he was arrested for murder. It was a terrible crime: an elderly woman had been beaten and suffocated in her home in Poughkeepsie, New York. But Dewey had nothing to do with it.

Five years later, Dewey was convicted on flimsy, circumstantial evidence, and became one of the estimated tens of thousands of innocent people stuck in prison for crimes they did not commit.Black people are overrepresented in that group: they are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than whites.

Before he was locked up, Dewey had taken up boxing. And while incarcerated at Sing Sing Prison, Dewey turned back to the sport he loved, something he says helped save his life. He became the prison's light heavyweight boxing champion, and after being released in 2009, he began mentoring young people and teaching them to box.

He didn’t give up on his dreams of boxing, and two years after his release, Dewey competed in his first professional fight, at 52 years old. Trymaine Lee sits down with Dewey to talk about his fight to prove his innocence and to live out his dreams, and the lessons he learned along the way.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

Exonerated of murder, boxer makes his debut at 52
26 Years: The Dewey Bozella Story (ESPN 30 for 30 documentary)

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Don’t Mess with Texas Voting Rights

Representative Senfronia Thompson, trymaine lee — Thu, 5 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Texas State Representative Senfronia Thompson remembers when her grandparents had to save pennies so they could pay a poll tax in order to vote. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, which outlawed Jim Crow restrictions like literacy tests and poll taxes designed to keep Black Americans from voting. But 56 years after President Lyndon Johnson signed that landmark legislation, Representative Thompson has found herself in the middle of another heated battle over voting rights.

This year alone, after Donald Trump falsely claimed he lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud, Republicans in 18 states have passed at least 30 new laws that restrict voting, claiming they are acting in the name of “election security.” That includes a law in Florida aimed at reducing early voting and drop box locations, and one in Georgia that would allow the legislature to take over local election boards and bans passing out food and water to people waiting to vote.

And then there’s Texas. Earlier this summer, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called special legislative session to pass a slew of Republican priorities, including voting restrictions. GOP lawmakers had the votes, but a group of Democrats pulled the only card they had left and fled the state to stall the vote. Rep Senfronia Thompson was one of them.

Trymaine Lee speaks with Rep. Thompson, who is the longest-serving Black lawmaker in state history, about why she’s risking arrest to keep up the fight for voters back home in Texas and to push for better voter protections nationwide.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

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Beyond the Fist: Activism at the Games

Wyomia Tyus, Trymaine Lee, Amira Rose Davis — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000

With COVID restrictions in place, the cheering section at this year’s Olympics may be a little quieter than usual. Still, the pomp and circumstance are still on display in Tokyo, as the world’s greatest athletes come together to compete.

But the global stage isn’t just a chance to display athletic feats, it’s also an opportunity for some athletes to make a statement. Several women’s soccer teams, including the US team, have taken a knee before matches. And before the Olympics started, American hammer thrower Gwen Berry turned from the flag after winning third place during the Olympic trials.

Berry and other activist-athletes other stand on the shoulders of people like sprinter Wyomia Tyus. In 1968, Tyus showed up ready to the Mexico City Olympics ready win. But 1968 wasn’t just about the games – it was a time of widespread protest, for Black Americans in particular. So Tyus used her stage to run in solidarity with other Black athletes.

Dr. Amira Rose Davis, co-host of the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down explains why Tyus ultimately got overshadowed, in part because she was a Black woman; and because it was the same year as one of the biggest moments in sports history: when John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in the air after winning medals in the men’s 200-meter race.

Tyus says that she didn’t mind Carlos and Smith getting most of the attention that year. She understands her legacy and is excited to see Black women like Berry continuing to build on the tradition of sports activism.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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8 Mile 4 Life

Trymaine Lee, Erin Einhorn, Olivia Lewis, Teresa Moon, Rose McKinney-James — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Sometimes discrimination is systemic. Sometimes it’s emotional. And sometimes, it’s made of brick and mortar. The Eight Mile Wall in Detroit, also known as the Birwood Wall and the Wailing Wall, was built in 1941 to separate Black and white residents in what is now known as the Wyoming neighborhood.

Erin Einhorn is an NBC News national reporter based in Detroit. She recently teamed up with Olivia Lewis, a reporter and editor for the local nonprofit newsroom Bridge Detroit to outline the creation of this half-mile-long wall, financed by one of the city’s most prominent families, and its impact on Detroit residents.

One of those residents is Rose McKinney-James, a clean energy consultant. She’s based in Las Vegas now, but grew up in Detroit. Rose’s grandmother, Burniece Avery, was a community activist who fought against the wall and other forms housing discrimination.

And they spoke with Teresa Moon, a retired city employee and long-time resident of the Eight Mile neighborhood. Teresa grew up with the wall literally in her backyard, and is now one of the neighborhood’s biggest cheerleaders.

Trymaine Lee sits down with Erin and Olivia to learn about the history of the Eight Mile Wall. And he speaks with Rose and Teresa about the legacy the wall left on their families.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Viewing:

Read the NBC News special report by Erin Einhorn and Olivia Lewis: Built to keep Black from white
Documentary: A Detroit neighborhood stands in the shadow of a segregation wall built 80 years ago

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Righting the Wrongs of the War on Drugs

Trymaine Lee, Ed Forchion, Dianna Houenou — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Ed Forchion, also known as NJWeedman, was a casualty of the War on Drugs, incarcerated on weed charges at the end of the 1990s. Across the country, Black people were disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs, and in New Jersey, the ACLU found that even in the last decade, if you’re Black you’re 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for weed.

But now, voters have opted to legalize recreational marijuana in the state. And the move raises the question of whether and how Black people will benefit from this change.

Since 2015, Ed has operated a black market weed shop directly across from City Hall in Trenton. He opened the shop to protest to what he saw as unjust marijuana laws. And now, even though he could apply for a legal license, he doesn’t have faith in the state to equitably give access to potential Black sellers.

Dianna Houenou is hoping to change Ed’s mind. She’s the chair of New Jersey’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission.The CRCis responsible for deciding rules for recreational use, which businesses and how businesses will get approved, and how social equity will play into the process.

Racial and social equity was initially not part of the New Jersey legalization plan, but activists pushed for it, which led to an excise fee that will go towards communities disproportionality affected by the War on Drugs. The Commission is slated to announce how this will all work in August. While there is some excitement around the push for social equity, states like California and Illinois have proved that these social equity programs might be more about promises than actual help for Black sellers.

Trymaine Lee heads to the Garden State to find out whether New Jersey will be able to effectively prioritize social equity as marijuana becomes legal.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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The Quiet Power of Preservation

Brent Leggs, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 8 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000

When Brent Leggs started as a preservationist with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2005, his first big project was to restore Joe Frazier’s Gym in Philadelphia. The late boxing champion’s former building was being turned into a discount furniture outlet. Brent and his colleagues knew the space had the power to tell a story of Black achievement and history, so they worked to restore he gym as a symbol of community pride.

Brent is now the Executive Director of the Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The Fund was launched in 2017 with the goal of preserving places key to Black life. These are the places that tell a fuller story of America, and Brent says that saving them can ensure that Black societal contributions are more fully understood. So far, the Fund has awarded grants to 65 historic locations and invested more than $4.3 million dollars to help preserve places like Nina Simone’s childhood home in North Carolina, Madame CJ Walker’s Villa Lewaro in New York, and Vernon AME church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Earlier this summer, they received a $20 million dollar donation from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. So, Brent and his colleagues now have even more support to pursue what he describes as the “quiet power of preservation.”

Brent talks with Trymaine Lee about how he fell in love with this work, and he takes us on a journey into a few of his favorite projects.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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Know Your History

Trymaine Lee, Kimberlé Crenshaw — Thu, 1 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Critical Race Theory. It feels like all of a sudden, this term is just everywhere.

White parents are protesting Critical Race Theory, falsely claiming it’s being used in social studies and anti-racist trainings to teach their children to hate themselves. Republican-led states across the country are introducing legislation to ban it from being taught in public schools. Fox News mentioned the term almost 1,300 times from March to mid-June.

But here’s the thing: almost everything these people are saying about Critical Race Theory is wrong. It’s not taught in K through 12 schools, it doesn’t say that people are inherently racist due to their genetics, and it’s not a “Marxist doctrine” that is “being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families,” as former President Donald Trump claimed last year.

Critical Race Theory is a way to study and scrutinize the intersection of race and law, that is primarily taught in law school. It’s a way of understanding how laws have embedded race and racism into our country.

It might be easy to dismiss this as just another battle in the right-wing culture war. But Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, a co-founder of the theory, says the conservative uproar is much more alarming that that.

“When we start dictating what can be taught, what can be said and what it is, we are well, well, down the road towards an authoritarian regime,” she tells host Trymaine Lee.

Professor Crenshaw explains the origins of Critical Race Theory, and how this backlash mirrors the ugliest parts of America’s racial past.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Black and Blue

Trymaine Lee, James Valsaint, Stanley Jean-Poix — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

After George Floyd’s murder, police departments across the country faced criticisms of systemic bias and a failure to reflect the communities they patrol and so they worked to enact reforms. But diversifying efforts have been underway for years inside the Miami Police Department. Roughly a quarter of all officers in Miami PD are Black, which is a much greater percentage than the city’s overall Black population. Over the past year, Black officers have been pushing for even more reform within the department, from the top down.

One of those officers is Sergeant Stanley Jean-Poix, President of the Miami Community Police Benevolent Association, the second oldest Black police union in the country. Jean-Poix joined the force over 20 years ago with the goal of enacting change from within the department. He led a two-year fight against the former police chief Jorge Colina, alleging he oversaw a department that treated Black officers unfairly, and let racist cops slide. Colina resigned last year.

But can true change come from the inside? James Valsaint, a Miami-based artist and activist, doesn’t think so. Valsaint was born in Little Haiti, one of the neighborhoods that Sgt. Jean-Poix patrols. His interactions with the police growing up were not positive, whether the officer was Black or white. Valsaint got active following the killing of Trayvon Martin; he joined the Dream Defenders, who fought against Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, and later helped to organize actions in Miami following George Floyd’s murder. For Valsaint, defunding the police is just the first step on the long march to police abolition.

For these two men from Miami, the goal of reducing police violence against Black Americans is shared, but they see different paths forward. Trymaine sits down with Sgt. Jean-Poix and Valsaint for a frank and challenging conversation on the progress and limitations of police reform.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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DC Votes Yes

Trymaine Lee, George Derek Musgrove, Anise Jenkins, Jamal Holtz — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Saturday marks Juneteenth, when the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas finally got word of their freedom in 1865. This came two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which despite popular opinion did not automatically free every enslaved person. Washington D.C. was among the first cities to end slavery, doing so in April of 1862, months before President Abraham Lincoln’s historic speech. But many D.C. residents argue full democracy and freedom is still out of reach.

Saturday marks Juneteenth, when the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas finally got word of their freedom in 1865. This came two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, signed into law this week by President Joe Biden.

In Washington D.C., slaveryactually came to an end before federal emancipation. But today, many D.C. residents argue full democracy and freedom is still out of reach.

The city is nowhome to 700,000 people, nearly half of whom are Black. But despite living within arms’ reach of the halls of power, residents of the so-called Chocolate City do not have a voting representative in the House or the Senate. That’s because D.C. is not a state.

For years, activists have beenpushing for statehood; some hope to name it the Douglass Commonwealth, after abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In April, the House of Representatives approved HR-51, which if approved by the Senate, would make D.C. the 51st state. With the Senate Homeland Security Committee set to hold a hearing on D.C. statehood next week, statehood activists say they are closer than ever to achieving their goal. Democrats, including President Biden, are on board. However, with strong GOP opposition, the outcome is anything but certain.

George Derek Musgrove, a University of Maryland-Baltimore County history professor, explains that statehood matters because D.C.’s current status means it’s controlled by Congress. Residents can elect a mayor and city council, but Congress oversees the city’s budget and can block laws it disapproves of. Residents can’t dictate their own affairs.

One activist working to change this is 22-year-oldJamal Holtz, who grew up in southeast D.C. He’s one of the co-founders of 51 for 51, agroup of young people fighting for statehood. People often refer to him D.C.’s “future governor.” One of the people he looks up to is 71-year-old Anise Jenkins. Anise is the founder of Stand Up! for Democracy in DC (Free DC). She’s been fighting for D.C. statehood since the 1990s – before Jamal was born. Anise has been arrested nine times as she’s protested for statehood, and she’s excited to see Jamal’s generation carrying on the fight.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Further Reading and Listening:

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Black Joy in the Summertime

Trymaine Lee, William Pickens — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

In a world where being Black and free are not always congruent, Black folks in America have always found ways of escaping the strictures of this country’s racial boundaries.

In the summer, that meant leaving town, with kids getting sent South to visit relatives, road trips to safe swimming holes, and some heading to historically Black summer havens like Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and Idlewild in Michigan.

These Black Edens drew generations of upwardly mobile Black people who were shut out of white America during much of the 20th century. And while some, like Bruce’s Beach in California, have been lost to land grabs and gentrification, others are holding tight.

William Pickens III, 84, grew up spending the summers in Sag Harbor Hills, one of the three small beachside communities on Long Island, New York nicknamed the Black Hamptons. Mr. Pickens talks to Trymaine Lee about the traditions and legacy of summering while Black, and the importance of a place where Black families could be themselves.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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Blood on Black Wall Street, Ep 2: Excavating the Past

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 3 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

100 years ago this week, a white mob burned down Tulsa's Greenwood District, a bustling business district. For decades, the government refused to acknowledge the Tulsa Race Massacre ever happened.

Only now, 100 years later, is an effort is underway to identify mass graves in Tulsa. Trymaine Lee visits a mass grave site with Kavin Ross, a local journalist, activist, and descendent of victims of the massacre.

But even as Black Tulsa has fought to unearth the truth and recover the remains of their ancestors, those efforts have been met with resistance and silence from many white Tulsans.

Ruth Sigler Avery is one of the few white Tulsans who did not remain silent, after witnessing some of the horrific aftermath of the massacre as a child. Ruth dedicated her life to documenting the massacre, but even members of her own family did not believe her story. Trymaine speaks to Ruth’s daughter, Joy Avery, about the shame and guilt that has kept this history buried in white families for so long.

At All Souls Unitarian, a historically white church in Tulsa, Reverend Marlin Lavanhar is working to get his congregation to wrestle with its role in the massacre. Many white members, including those who are descended from people involved, have chosen to leave the church rather than confront the past. Young Tulsa residents, like Bailey McBride, are ready and willing to acknowledge what happened and help take responsibility for the past. But even the most informed white Tulsans are still learning things they didn’t know about their connections to the massacre.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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Blood on Black Wall Street, Ep 1: What Was Stolen

The Bagby Family, The Eaton Family, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 27 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

100 years ago this week, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma experienced one of the worst incidents of racial violence in this country’s history when a white mob laid siege to the prosperous Greenwood district. Greenwood was known as “Black Wall Street,” a nickname given by Booker T. Washington, for the number of wealthy Black families and Black owned businesses.

In less than 48 hours, from May 31 to June 1, 1921, the community was destroyed. Death tolls are disputed, but 300 Black people are believed to have been killed. Thousands were left homeless, and generations later, families are still struggling to recover their lost wealth. There were $1.8 million in property loss claims at the time, and some experts estimate that in today’s dollars, the white mob decimated $200 million of Black property.

Trymaine Lee travels to Tulsa to meet the Bagbys, whose business in the Greenwood district was destroyed and the Eatons, whose business was miraculously left standing. Through their stories, Trymaine traces the connection between inherited property and wealth, and explores how the massacre and subsequent policies have maintained the racial wealth gap over the last century.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

Into America teamed up with the NBC News digital documentary unit to tell more of these stories from the massacre. Check out our documentary “Blood on Black Wall Street: The Legacy of the Tulsa Massacre.”
107-year-old survivor of Tulsa Race Massacre calls on U.S. to acknowledge 1921 event
Into America: American Coup

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Can You Hear Us Now? One Year Later

Tue, 25 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Since the murder of George Floyd on May 25th 2020, America has been reeling from the shock of that initial violent act and the anguish that sent thousands into the streets in protest across the country.

And when those guilty verdicts were delivered, some were brought to tears that a black family had finally tasted something close to justice. But one verdict does little to untether America from its roots, some four hundred years deep and growing.

Have the past year of protests and the push for reform bent America any closer toward justice for all? Or does justice remain a dream deferred for black America?

I set out to answer those questions in a series of conversations with thinkers, doers, activists and policymakers who know intimately where we’ve been and perhaps where we’re headed. Panelists include:

Jelani Cobb, staff writer at The New Yorker and NBC News contributor
Anna Deavere Smith, an actress, professor, and playwright who created a Tony nominated one woman show about the 1992 Los Angeles riots
Representative Mondaire Jones, freshman Democratic Congressman who represents New York's 17th Congressional District
Carmen Best, former Seattle police chief and NBC News law enforcement analyst
Marlon Petersen, host of the Decarcerated podcast and author of Bird Uncaged and Abolitionist Freedom Song
Trayvon Free, writer, director and comedian
Lee Merritt, civil rights attorney
Dr. Sandy Darity, the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor at Duke University
Amanda Seales, comedian and creator of Smart, Funny and Black
Martin Luther King II, the eldest son of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and a human and civil rights advocate

We hope you enjoy these conversations from Trymaine Lee’s NBC News Now special Can You Hear Us Now? One Year Later.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Viewing and Listening:

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After George Floyd

Trymaine Lee, Christopher Martin — Thu, 20 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

The world met Christopher Martin when he testified in the Derek Chauvin trial.

Christopherwas just 18-years-old when he accepted a counterfeit $20 bill from George Floyd as a clerk at a Minneapolis Cup Foods. That bill led to a 911 call, and eventually George Floyd’s death.Christopher’s composed yet emotional testimony over his role and his guilt resonated across the country, but his own story is still mostly untold.

Christopher opens up to Trymaine Lee about his life before George Floyd, the trauma of that day and how he’s trying to move forward a year later.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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A Shape-Up and a Check-In

Trymaine Lee, J. Divine Alexander, Lorenzo Lewis — Thu, 13 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Black men are crying out. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for young Black Americans and our young men are at particular risk. Stigmas, health care access, and social pressures to appear hyper-masculine stop a lot of Black men from getting help. But a grassroots program known as The Confess Project is trying to break this pattern.

The group started in Little Rock, Arkansas in 2016, and now trains barbers across the country to act as mental health advocates by equipping them with strategies to listen and respond to the pain of the men they see in their chairs.

Trymaine Lee talks to the founder of The Confess Project, Lorenzo Lewis; and Louisville barber J. Divine Alexander breaks down how the program has helped him support his clients, and, been good for his own mental health.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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Lessons on Warrant Reform from Ferguson

Trymaine Lee, Blake Strode — Thu, 6 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

It often takes a tragedy to start a conversation around reform in this country.

So when two Black men, Duante Wright and Andrew Brown Jr., were killed by police last month as officers were attempting to serve arrest warrants, calls for warrant reform joined the chorus of other demands for change. Last week, Minnesota lawmakers began the process of trying to answer those calls and put forward a bill that would replace arrest warrants with a written warning system for most misdemeanor offenses.

Ferguson, Missouri may offer lessons about warrant reform to other cities. Reforming the warrant system became a priority in 2015, after the Department of Justice released their report on Ferguson in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing the year before. The report noted that in 2013, Ferguson courts issued nearly 33,000 warrants for arrest, in a city of 21,000 people. The overwhelming majority of warrants were for Black residents.

ArchCity Defenders, a legal advocacy organization, helped push for warrant reform in the St. Louis region in 2015 and continues the work today. Executive director BlakeStrode talks to Trymaine Lee about how warrants are used to police Black communities, the successes and challenges of warrant reform, and what other places can learn from Ferguson’s fight for justice.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Reading and Listening:

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100 Days of Biden

Trymaine Lee — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

President Joe Biden spent his first 100 days in office passing the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, rolling back executive orders signed by former President Donald Trump, and ramping up a massive vaccination program. 140 million Americans now have at least one dose of the vaccine. His approval ratings are generally high, around 53% according to a new NBC poll. Among Black Americans, it’s much higher, a whopping 83%.

But alongside those numbers is a promise Joe Biden made back in November, during his victory speech. He said to Black Americans, “You always had my back, I’ll have yours.” Has he kept that promise?

Trymaine Lee goes to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a state that barely flipped back to blue in 2020, and a city where Black turnout actually dropped in some neighborhoods, to ask Black voters if they believe Biden has done enough for them in his first 100 days.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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A Verdict

Tiffany Crutcher, Shaquille Brewster, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Three hundred and thirty-one days ago, Derek Chauvin put his knee on the neck of George Floyd for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. George Floyd took his last breath on his stomach, hands cuffed behind his back.

His death, captured on cell phone video by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, sparked a summer of unrest and calls to abolish the police around the country.

This week, after a televised trial and around 11 hours of deliberation, the jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of all three charges he faced: second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

It was the first time in Minnesota state history that a white police officer has been held accountable for killing a Black man. It was the first time that America could call Derek Chauvin what many have long believed he is. Murderer.

With this verdict, what has been achieved? And what work remains?

Shaquille Brewster, correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, explains the reforms activists in Minneapolis hope to see next. And Shaquille and Trymaine talk about what it has been like covering this case as Black journalists.

And in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trymaine sits down with Tiffany Crutcher, whose brother Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by police in 2016. They talk about how the families of people who have been killed by police are working together to push for greater police accountability and a system that brings us closer to justice.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Is It Time to Abolish the Filibuster?

Trymaine Lee, Jelani Cobb — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

The filibuster is one of the better-known bits of procedure in the Senate. It might conjure images of politicians droning on for hours, or simply partisan gridlock, but the rule has an insidious, racial history. Senators have used it as a tool to block civil rights legislation since the later part of the 18th century.

But this history isn’t confined to the past. Today, the threat of a filibuster is colliding with a fight over the future of voting rights, as Republicans vow to block a bill called H.R. 1, which expands voting protections for Black folks and other minorities.

There are growing calls to reform or even abolish the filibuster. But Republicans, and a few Democrats, won’t let go of the filibuster without a fight. Host Trymaine Lee talks with New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb about how the filibuster has been weaponized and racialized over time and asks whether American Democracy might be better off without it.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Weight of Bearing Witness

Dr. BraVada Garrett-Akinsanya, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 8 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

It’s the second week of the trial of former Minneapolis police officerDerek Chauvin, and witnesses of all ages have been asked to recount what they saw on May 25th, 2020, as Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. Emotions in the courtroom have run high as witnesses have been asked to relive the trauma of last summer.

In this episode, Dr. BraVada Garrett-Akinsanya, founder of the African American Wellness Institute, a mental health agency in Minneapolis, speaks with Trymaine Lee about the physical, psychological, and spiritual impacts of racial trauma on these witnesses and Black communities across the country. She also unpacks the risks of retraumatizationthat come with a public trial.

Calling herself a "Black Liberation Psychologist", Dr. Garrett-Akinsanya also touches on the healing journey for these witnesses, and with this trauma and grief, their right to be well as human beings.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Daughters of Malcolm and Martin

Ilyasah Shabazz, Bernice King, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 1 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. met just one time in life, on March 26, 1964, during Congressional hearings for the Civil Rights Act. The two are often described as opposites, and their styles in the fight for Black freedom were undoubtedly different. But the men had a respect for each other that grew into a deep bond between the two families following their assassinations.

Today, Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughters of Malcolm X, and Dr. Bernice King, the daughter of MLK, share a birthright of inherited activism that few others can understand. They each run their families’ foundations, the Shabazz Center and King Center, and strive to carry on their parents’ fight for the future.

As one generation’s fight for racial equality spills into the next, Shabazz and Dr. King talk with Trymaine Lee on the latest Into America about their famous parents, the ongoing push for equality, and what it means to inherit a legacy.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com

Further Viewing and Listening:

“The Dead Are Arising,” Into America
Watch: Daughters Of Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X Reflect On Fight For Equality

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Justice for Black Farmers

Trymaine Lee, Eddie Lewis III, John Boyd — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Tucked inside the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill signed by President Biden on March 11, 2021, is $5 billion worth of aid to help Black and disadvantaged farmers. The American Rescue Plan includes $4 billion to erase debt for any farmer with an outstanding loan that involves the USDA. And an additional $1 billion dollars has been planned for training, technical assistance, and legal aid... all aimed at helping farmers of color acquire and maintain land, after decades of discrimination from the USDA.

Eddie Lewis III is a 5th generation sugarcane farmer from Youngsville, Louisiana. He and his brothers farm the land their ancestors were once sharecroppers on. The Lewis family has paid off millions of dollars in debt to the USDA, and they still have $600,000 in debt remaining. Lewis was thrilled to hear about the relief package because without help, the family is at risk of foreclosure.

Lewis joins Trymaine Lee for this episode of Into America, along with John Boyd from the National Black Farmers Association. Boyd walks us through the details of the legislation, and the history of discrimination that has made it so necessary.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Without Water in Jackson

cassandra welchlin, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, trymaine lee — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000

It’s been a month since an historic winter storm hit Jackson, Mississippi, leaving tens of thousands of residents without clean water, or without any water at all. Most of those residents were Black. Four weeks later, much of the capital city still has to boil water to drink.

Eighty-two percent of the residents in Jackson are Black and nearly a third live in poverty. Over the past several decades, the city has not had enough money to fix its dilapidated water system.

State lawmakers, whose leadership has always been white, are debating how to address the water crisis before the end of the legislative session in just a few weeks; historically, state leaders have insisted that Jackson’s water problems are the city’s fault, and the city’s to fix.

Many residents, including Jackson’s mayor, say race and racism play a big part in the struggle over the decades-long water crisis in Jackson. If the city were majority-white, they say, this problem would have been fixed a long time ago.

Host Trymaine Lee speaks with West Jackson resident Cassandra Welchlin, executive director of Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable and an advocate for Black women and girls in the state.

And Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba discusses the problem from his vantage point as the man in charge of the water crisis and the chief advocate for more money from the state to fix the crumbling system.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Jury System on Trial

will snowden, trymaine lee, charlene cooke — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 10:00:00 +0000

This week, jury selection began for the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former police office charged in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last summer.

Juries hold tremendous power in our legal system. They determine who lives, who dies, and who goes free. The right to a jury of our peers is enshrined in the Constitution, guaranteeing us all the right to a “speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” And yet, juries in America remain overwhelmingly white, even in cases with Black victims and defendants. The Equal Justice Initiative found that white juries spend less time deliberating outcomes, consider fewer perspectives, and ultimately, make more errors.

Will Snowden is watching closely; he’s a New Orleans public defender and founder of The Juror Project, an advocacy group dedicated to building fair and representative juries. He walks us through the challenges of building a fair jury in such a high-profile case.

And Trymaine Lee speaks with Charlene Cooke, the sole Black juror on the trial for Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, charged with murdering Laquan McDonald in 2014. She talks about what it was like to be the only Black person in the room.

Editors’ note: This episode incorrectly named the source of the video that captured the Laquan McDonald shooting. The piece has been updated to properly identify the video as police dashcam footage, not cell phone video.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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The Vaccine Gap

Reed Gusciora, Trymaine Lee, Janice Phillips — Thu, 4 Mar 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Black Americans have been among the hardest hit by the coronavirus, but they aren't being vaccinated at the same rates as white Americans. Black people are receiving fewer than 7 percent of total vaccine doses, despite representing more than 13 percent of the population. This gap is often based on mistrust of the medical establishment, but there is more to the story. Issues of access mean many folks who want the vaccine, can’t get it.

Janice Phillips tells Trymaine Lee she has been trying to get the vaccine for her 103-year-old mother for months. She and her mother live in Trenton, New Jersey, a city of 85,000 that is near half Black. She watched the news in frustration as she saw images of White residents getting their shots in surrounding suburbs. In New Jersey, just 4 percent of vaccine doses have gone to Black residents.

So last month, the state launched a new effort that relies on members of the community to help close the access gap. It’s a community partnership that relies on faith leaders to help get communities of color vaccinated. Trymaine speaks with Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora about this new program. And Reverend Darrell Armstrong of Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton shares the story of how he helped get Janice Phillips and her centenarian mother vaccinated.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Harlem On My Mind, Ep 4: Abram Hill

Dr. Koritha Mitchell, Voza Rivers, Anthony Goss, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000

In the final installment of Harlem on My Mind, Trymaine Lee learns about the legacy of playwright Abram Hill, who used his work to center Black characters, Black audiences, and Black communities unapologetically.

Abram Hill co-founded the American Negro Theater in 1940, operating a small 150-seat theater from the basement of Harlem’s Schomburg Center. The American Negro Theater, also known as the ANT, would become a launch pad for stars like Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, even as Hill’s name was largely lost to history.

Trymaine tours the Schomburg Center with chief of staff Kevin Matthews, and sits down with Dr. Koritha Mitchell, an associate English professor at Ohio State University, to better understand Abram Hill and the ANT’s rise and fall.

And we learn about the legacy Hill leaves behind. In the 1960s, the New Heritage Theater Group grew from the foundation of the ANT and has been going strong since. Voza Rivers is the group’s executive producer. Trymaine talks with him, as well as actor Anthony Goss, who appeared in a 2017 re-production of Hill’s hit play On Strivers’ Row. Rivers and Goss, two men forty years apart, describe how Hill’s commitment to community continues to resonate across generations.

We also hear from Abram Hill, in his own words, thanks to audio recordings from Schomburg Center archives and the Hatch Billops Estate, as well as the Works Progress Administration Oral History collection at George Mason University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Harlem on My Mind, Ep 3: Jessie Redmon Fauset

Morgan Jerkins, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000

In Part 3 of Into America’s Black History Month series, Harlem on My Mind, Trymaine Lee spotlights the influence of Jessie Redmon Fauset. Langston Hughes called her one of the midwives of the Harlem Renaissance, but few today remember her name.

As literary editor for NAACP’s The Crisis magazine, Fauset fostered the careers of many notable writers of the time: poets Countee Cullen and Gwendolyn Bennet, novelist Nella Larsen, writer Claude McCay. Fauset was the first person to publish Langston Hughes, when The Crisis printed the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Fauset was also a writer, penning essays and poems. She went on to write four novels, including There is Confusion (1924). Her focus on bourgeois characters and women’s ambition shaped the conversation about Black identity in Harlem at the time.

Dr. Julia S. Charles, professor of English at Auburn University, sheds light on the full scope of Fauset’s work, including her complicated relationship with Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and other notable Black thinkers. Author Morgan Jerkins describes how Fauset’s legacy has inspired her own work as a writer, editor, and resident of today’s Harlem.

Special thanks to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

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Harlem on My Mind, Ep 2: Arturo Schomburg

trymaine lee, Vanessa Valdés, shola lynch, dean schomburg — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Into America continues its Black History Month series, Harlem on My Mind, following four figures from Harlem who defined Blackness for themselves and what it means to be Black in America today. The series begins when Trymaine Lee acquires a signed print by Jacob Lawrence titled “Schomburg Library.”

The Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture is based in Harlem, but its roots are on the island of Puerto Rico with a little Afro Puerto Rican boy named Arturo Schomburg. Determined to collect a record of Black history that could tell us who we are and where we’ve been, Arturo Schomburg amassed a personal collection of 10,000 Black books, artwork and documents. That collection eventually became the Schomburg Center we know today, which is part of the New York Public Library system.

Trymaine Lee speaks with Vanessa Valdés, author of Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Shola Lynch, curator of the Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division of the Schomburg Center, and Arturo Schomburg’s grandson, Dean Schomburg to better understand who Arturo was and the impact of his legacy on Black identity and Black culture.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Harlem on My Mind, Ep 1: Jacob Lawrence

MS NOW — Thu, 4 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000

This Black History Month, Into America launches Harlem on My Mind, a series that follows four figures from Harlem who defined Blackness for themselves and what it means to be Black in America today.

The story begins in December, when host Trymaine Lee acquires something he coveted for years: a numbered print titled Schomburg Library by American icon Jacob Lawrence. The print came with a handwritten dedication to a man named Abram Hill. Who was Abram Hill? How did he know Jacob Lawrence? Did their paths cross at the famed Schomburg Library?

What follows is a journey of discovery, through conversations with friends, historians and experts, to understand the interconnected lives of Black creators in and around the Harlem Renaissance. And it starts with Jacob Lawrence, a child of the Great Migration who was nurtured by the great artists and ideas of the period. Two women who knew Lawrence well, art historian Dr. Leslie King-Hammond and artist Barbara Earl Thomas, reflect on his life, death and contributions to Black culture.

Special thanks to the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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Reporting on Race

Farai Chideya, Trymaine Lee — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000

This week, President Biden outlined his commitment to addressing racial equity and righting historical wrongs. But Black journalists have been trying to sound the alarm on the consequences of racism and extremism for years. In predominantly white newsrooms, their calls were often met with skepticism and dismissiveness, and as a result, we’ve all paid the price.

Journalist Farai Chideya has covered every presidential election since 1996. Her resume includes stints at CNN, ABC News, and FiveThirtyEight. She knows first-hand what it’s like to try to tell stories of racial animus, only to be silenced by white gatekeepers. In addition to being a journalist, Farai is also a media analyst. As a fellow with Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, she studied the lack of diversity in American newsrooms.

Farai recently started her own newsroom, serving as creator and host of Our Body Politic, a politics podcast about women of color. It’s produced in collaboration with public radio stations KCRW, KPCC, and KQED. She joins Trymaine Lee to discuss the ways in which institutionalized bias in mainstream media led to inadequate coverage of race under Trump, and the lessons journalists need to keep in mind during the Biden administration.

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Fighting White Supremacy on Day One

trymaine lee, errol southers — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000

The violent insurrection against our nation’s Capitol building this month pulled an ugly truth to the surface, one that’s been hiding in plain sight for decades. White supremacist extremism is widespread, deep-rooted and a major threat to our security. In his inaugural address on Wednesday, President Joe Biden named white supremacy as a danger to our unity and vowed to defeat it.

But law enforcement and government agencies have refused to acknowledge the full scope of the problem, especially when it appears within their own ranks. Will the attack earlier this month motivate the new administration to take this threat more seriously?

Trymaine Lee sits down with Erroll Southers, a former federal agent and an expert in homegrown extremism at the University of Southern California. Southers lays out how white supremacist extremism was fostered over decades in this country, and the steps President Biden can take to begin to address the crisis.

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The Undecided Election

MS NOW — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 19:36:52 +0000

Americans were told for months that results from the 2020 presidential election could take days, even weeks, to be confirmed. But there was little clarity on how it would all play out.

For the first time in seven months, host Trymaine Lee hit the road for North Carolina, to track the Black vote in this crucial swing state. He found enthusiasm on a college campus, wary determination outside of polling places, and democracy in action as election workers gathered results in the bowels of an old courtroom.

But as Election Day came and went without a clear winner, North Carolinians were left in limbo, waiting to find out who their state voted for. And all of America was left wondering which way our country is headed.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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American Coup

MS NOW — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 19:29:48 +0000

The storming of the Capitol building by white extremists loyal to Donald Trump on January 6th, was violent, deadly and shameful.

But it wasn’t unprecedented. The attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election follows a long tradition in America of white violence, aimed at undoing Democracy.

At nearly every turn, where this country bent toward freedom, there was a violent backlash. And there is perhaps no clearer example than the story of the only successful coup in U.S. history.

In 1898, white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina carried out a riot and insurrection, targeting Black lawmakers and residents.

Inez Campbell Eason’s family survived the coup, but Black lawmakers were ousted, dozens of Black residents were killed, and she tells Trymaine Lee that the impact on the city is still felt.

Dr. Sharlene Sinegal-Decuir, African American History professor at Xavier University in New Orleans, explains the long history of white violence in response to progress. In order to prevent insurrections like the one last week in Washington, D.C., she says we must begin to understand our past.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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A Fresh New Look

MS NOW — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 16:10:28 +0000

This moment calls for us to be honest and truthful about who we are as Americans, who we’ve been and who we hope to become. And there’s no way to do that without examining the role, range and power of Blackness in America. Trymaine Lee introduces a new look that speaks to the hopes, anxieties and aspirations of Black America.

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An Election and an Insurrection

MS NOW — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 16:09:15 +0000

On the afternoon of January 6th, the nation was gripped by the images of Trump supporters charging the Capitol building as Congress gathered to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. These scenes brought to bear what so many democracy-loving people across this country have long feared, that Trump’s final days as President would end violently.

But hours earlier, attention was on the Georgia Senate races, where Democrat Reverend Raphael Warnock won his runoff election against Republican Kelly Loeffler. Rev. Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, spiritual home of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., will become the first Black senator from the state of Georgia. He’ll be the second Black senator from the South since Reconstruction.

Jaime Harrison is a Warnock supporter. Harrison ran for Senate this year in South Carolina. He lost his race, but turned his attention to his political action committee, Dirt Road PAC, putting money behind Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who ran for and won Georgia’s other Senate seat. These dual victories mean Democrats take control of the US Senate this year.

Jaime Harrison joins Trymaine Lee to reflect on the significance of Warnock’s win and the path forward for Democrats.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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BONUS: Not the Last

MS NOW — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 16:06:32 +0000

In a bonus for Into America listeners, Trymaine Lee joins Joy Reid, host of the podcast Kamala: Next In Line in a roundtable discussion.

Kamala Harris has been elected the 49th Vice President of the United States. So what comes next? Joy speaks with Pulitzer Prize winner, opinion writer for The Washington Post and an MSNBC contributor, Jonathan Capehart, editor at large at the 19th, and MSNBC contributor Errin Haynes and Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award winner, MSNBC correspondent and host of Into America, Trymaine Lee. Listen and subscribe to the series: https://link.chtbl.com/description-kamala

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Enough is Enough

MS NOW — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000

As an outspoken sports journalist, Jemele Hill has been told to “stick to sports” in her coverage. The same has been said to professional athletes for decades. But things changed in 2020, when the pandemic and racial justice movements collided. Black athletes decided the fight was worth risking it all for. And many team owners and the leagues realized it was good for business to support their players.

Trymaine Lee looks back on the year of sports and activism with Jemele Hill, contributing writer for The Atlantic and host of the podcast Jemele Hill is Unbothered. Jemele traces the roots of why Black athletes stayed silent in the past and why change is more likely to stick in the NBA than the NFL. Plus, why she thinks the solution may be to just burn the whole system down.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Black Toys R Us

MS NOW — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000

From children’s books, to cartoons, to the worlds of fantasy and make believe, it can sometimes seem as if Black characters are on the side-lines, or don’t exist at all. Especially around the holidays, Black parents get creative to find toys for their kids that reflect just how beautiful and special they are.

More than three decades ago, Yla Eason took matters into her own hands when her Black son said that he couldn’t be a superhero because he’s not white. Trymaine Lee talks to Yla, about why she created Sun-Man, one of the first Black superhero toys in America, and the challenges she encountered along the way.

And we get some words of wisdom from Trymaine’s 8-year-old daughter, Nola, on why representation in toys matters.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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At the Sherman Phoenix, Black Businesses Rise

MS NOW — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000

The holidays should be the busiest time of the year, but small businesses everywhere have been crushed by the pandemic and its restrictions. The picture is especially grim for Black-owned small businesses, which closed at twice the rate of white-owned small businesses this spring.

But in the city of Milwaukee, there’s a bright spot. A collective of mostly Black-owned businesses is not only surviving, it's thriving.

For entrepreneurs JoAnne and Maanaan Sabir, envisioning a place where that could be possible began in 2016, following the police shooting of a young Black man that set off days of protests. Two years later, the Sabirs opened the Sherman Phoenix, a community healing space and hub of more than two dozen small businesses.

Business owners within the Sherman Phoenix have been able to stave off closures and financial hardship tied to COVID-19. Trymaine Lee talks to Adija Smith, a Phoenix tenant about her journey from home baker to storefront owner, and how she’s relied on and supported her fellow Black business owners within the collective.

And Trymaine sits down with JoAnne and Maanaan to talk about how the Sherman Phoenix could provide a model for other Black community spaces, especially during tough times.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Critical Condition

MS NOW — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000

In Chicago, one of the most segregated American cities, race and proximity to quality healthcare are inextricably linked, and the divide has been exacerbated COVID19 continues to infect and kill Black people disproportionately.

At the same time, Black Chicagoans are seeing hospitals in their communities closing at an alarming rate. Since 2018, three hospitals have closed on the South and West sides. And now a fourth, Mercy Hospital, the oldest in the city, is slated to close next year.

Host Trymaine Lee talks to activist Jitu Brown, who says Mercy has a duty to remain open and continue to serve the mostly Black surrounding neighborhoods. Etta Davis, a patient at Mercy, says the hospital’s plan to open a new outpatient clinic makes her worried about what could happen in an emergency.

But Dr. Thomas Britt of the Health Policy Institute of Chicago, says Mercy, which loses $4 million a month, is in too much debt and serves too many underinsured patients to continue to under its current model. He says elected officials and healthcare providers need to think outside the box to better serve communities.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

Mercy Hospital Announces Closure After Operating for Nearly 170 Years

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"The Dead Are Arising"

MS NOW — Thu, 3 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000

Malcolm X is a towering cultural figure. Movies have been made about him, books have been written, and he’s been mythologized since his assassination in 1965. But an encounter at a cocktail party in Detroit led journalist Les Payne to realize how much more there was to understand about the man.

Les Payne spent the last three decades of his life learning everything he could about Malcolm X. The result is The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, a new book that sheds light on the people, places, and experiences that shaped Malcolm X into the man he’d become. Late last month, The Dead Are Arising won a 2020 National Book Award for nonfiction.

It’s praise that Les Payne would not live to hear. Payne died in 2018 while still working to put the final touches on his book. So his daughter, Tamara Payne, who had been a researcher with him from the start of the project, finished the work.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee sits down with Tamara and her mother, Violet Payne, to talk about Les Payne, their family’s love for Malcolm X, and the legacies of these two men.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Food for the Soul

MS NOW — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000

Like the Blues and Jazz, the Black American culinary tradition is rooted in a specific kind of American experience. From one generation to the next, Black families have turned to traditional dishes to celebrate the holidays, to commiserate and even to mourn.

This holiday season, with COVID19 and hunger rising in tandem, too many Black families will be mourning rather than celebrating. Some will be relying on the kindness of strangers to fill their stomachs and their spirits, while others will turn to comfort foods that have gotten us through the worst of times.

In the latest episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks to culinary historian and author Michael Twitty about the forces that influenced Black American cooking and why food is a source of Black joy. Trymaine also talks to Cindy Ayers Elliott of Foot Print Farms in Jackson, Mississippi, about her mission: using traditional foodways to fill systemic gaps, feed the hungry and keep people healthy this Thanksgiving.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Kamala Harris and the Rainbow Sign

MS NOW — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000

Kamala Harris has made history as the first woman, first Black and first South Asian vice president-elect. On the latest episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee explores the little-known history of a place that shaped her identity - the Rainbow Sign. The Rainbow Sign was a Black cultural center in Berkeley, California that opened its doors in 1971 and welcomed the likes of James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Shirley Chisholm, and a young Black and Indian girl from Oakland named Kamala. In her memoir, Harris writes, “Kids like me, who spent time at Rainbow Sign were exposed to dozens of extraordinary men and women who showed us what we could become.”

Odette Pollar, whose mother Mary Ann Pollar who founded Rainbow Sign in 1971, tells Trymaine what the center was like during its brief but influential lifespan. And Dezie Woods-Jones, founder and President of Black Women Organized for Political Action, explains how the social and political climate in the Bay Area at the time gave rise to Rainbow Sign, and how the center impacted Harris’ life.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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I Have Your Back

MS NOW — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000

When Joe Biden addressed the nation for the first time as president-elect, he singled out the Black community for helping him throughout his campaign, and he made a promise. "You’ve always had my back,” he said, pounding on the lectern. “And I’ll have yours.”

Host Trymaine Lee takes a closer look at this line from Joe Biden’s speech, first by digging into how Black voters helped push Biden to victory. Brittany Smalls, statewide coordinator in Pennsylvania for Black Voters Matter talks about the work it took on the ground to get Black Americans to the polls.

And Eddie Glaude, Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University and MSNBC analyst, unpacks Biden’s promise have the Black community’s back and how voters can keep him accountable.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Could Black Men Help Flip Florida?

MS NOW — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 09:00:00 +0000

In order to win the election in less than a week, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party need to do what Barack Obama did 12 years ago: expand the electorate. In 2008, 12 percent voters were people who hadn’t previously been participating, and 19 percent of all Black voters were new to the polls. But in 2016, many of them, including Black men, stayed home. Now, a grassroots effort is building to re-engage these men.

Into America heads to the swing state of Florida, where local Black elected officials are leading the effort to reach out to Black men. Trymaine Lee talks with a Miami native, Maurice Hanks, about his ups and downs with political participation over the years. And we hear from Florida State Senator Randolph Bracy, who is using unconventional methods to prove to Black men that their votes have power.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Getting Black Men to the Polls

MS NOW — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 23:00:32 +0000

In the last days of the 2020 election, both campaigns are targeting a crucial demographic: Black men. While Black men do vote overwhelmingly Democratic, some polling shows President Trump has made inroads with young Black men and Republicans are hoping to capitalize on that momentum. The Biden team is making a push to get the Black men who may have sat out in 2016, and bringing out former President Barack Obama to campaign in Pennsylvania.

To understand why this is a key group in 2020, and game out some scenarios, Trymaine Lee talks with Cornell Belcher, Democratic pollster, NBC News and MSNBC political analyst, and president of the polling firm brilliant corners Research & Strategy. Belcher, who worked on both Obama campaigns, brings his insights on how 2020 is different from 2016, and why the surge in early voting makes predicting this election difficult.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading

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Into Amy Coney Barrett's Record on Race

MS NOW — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett faced tough questions from Democrats last week over her positions on abortion, religion, and how she interprets the Constitution. But Judge Barrett’s stances on race deserve attention too.

Beyond acknowledging that racism exists, Judge Barrett refused to elaborate on the state of race in the country today, saying giving broader diagnoses about racism is “kind of beyond what I'm capable of doing as a judge.”

Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF), doesn’t agree. After analyzing Judge Barrett’s decisions, writings, and speeches, Nelson and the LDF, the nation’s premier racial justice legal organization, are deeply troubled by Judge Barrett’s record on race.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to vote on her confirmation this week, Nelson tells Trymaine Lee why she is concerned about Judge Barrett’s nomination and what a Justice Amy Coney Barrett could mean for future Supreme Court rulings involving race.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Intimidation at the Polls

MS NOW — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 23:00:00 +0000

For months, the Republican party and the Trump campaign have been warning, without evidence, that voter fraud could be a deciding factor in the election. They say they are amassing an army of poll watchers to make sure that doesn’t happen. But election officials and advocates worry these tactics could intimidate Democratic voters, especially in Black and brown communities. Poll watching is legal. Voter intimidation is not.

In this episode, host Trymaine Lee explores a time in the not-so-distance past when voter intimidation played a big role in an important election. Mark Krasovic, a history professor at Rutgers University, tells the story of the 1981 gubernatorial election in New Jersey, when the Republican National Committee organized groups of men, some of them armed, to patrol precincts in minority neighborhoods in the name of ballot security.

Could the same thing happen in 2020? Jane Timm, NBC News political reporter, joins Trymaine to discuss what we know about the GOP’s ballot security efforts in this election and for a better understanding of what poll watchers can and can’t do.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Black Creeks Pushing for Tribal Citizenship

MS NOW — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 23:29:21 +0000

Rhonda Grayson is the great-granddaughter of America Cohee Webster, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. Rhonda can say America’s roll number by heart: 4661.

Rhonda grew up aware and proud of her Creek ancestry, but has not been able to enroll as a member of the tribe herself. In 1979, the Creek Nation re-wrote its constitution to change the citizenship parameters so that only people who could trace their lineage by blood could be members. That meant Black people who were the descendants of the Creek’s enslaved population were removed from the rolls. These people were called Creek Freedmen, and until 1979, they were considered members of the tribe.

Rhonda is now a founding member of the Muscogee Creek Indian Freedmen Band, a group of Black people working to preserve their families’ connection to the Creek Nation. On Into America, Rhonda tells Trymaine Lee about her fight to be legally recognized as part of the Muscogee Creek Nation. And they talk about her family’s legacy: including her great-grandmother, America Cohee, whose picture you can find as the tile art for this episode.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into a High-Stakes VP Debate

MS NOW — Thu, 8 Oct 2020 23:52:38 +0000

There was a little policy and a lot of politicking. There was at least a veneer of civility. There was a fly.

In perhaps the most high-stakes VP debate in history, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris made their cases to the American public for their running mate.

Last night’s debate was the second most watched VP debate in history. Given that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump would the oldest presidents ever inaugurated, and that the President Trump currently has the virus, it’s no surprise that Americans tuned in to see the would-be second in commands on Wednesday night.

One of the people watching was Sonja Nichols. Sonja is an outlier in a lot of ways. She’s a Republican businessowner running for State Senate in Charlotte, North Carolina. She’s Black, and she’s a supporter of Senator Harris as a Black woman.

But she voted for President Trump in 2016, and Sonja says at the time, she was paying more attention to Mike Pence than she was to Donald Trump. Trymaine Lee sits down with her to talk about how the candidates performed and what shapes her political beliefs.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Trump, Coronavirus and Conspiracy Theories

MS NOW — Wed, 7 Oct 2020 23:25:19 +0000

President Trump announced that he and the First Lady tested positive for COVID-19 on Twitter, in the middle of the night last week.

Brandy Zadrozny spends her days sorting through the chaos of the internet for NBC News, trying to track conspiracy theories and misinformation campaigns. As soon as she heard President Trump had tested positive, she knew the internet would explode.

And she was right. QAnon claimed Trump was pretending to have COVID-19 as part of some sort of plan to arrest Hillary Clinton. Other people said he was just trying to get out of the next debate, or maybe even delay the election.

On this episode of Into America, Brandy sits down with Trymaine Lee to break down what she’s been seeing online, where she’s seeing it, and why this spread of misinformation matters.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the President's Health and the Public Trust

MS NOW — Mon, 5 Oct 2020 23:43:34 +0000

Over the past five days, President Donald Trump has been diagnosed with coronavirus, hospitalized at Walter Reed Military Medical Center, and discharged back to the White House.

White House doctors and officials gave conflicting report on the president’s health all weekend, and there is still uncertainty about the president’s condition and how infectious he may be.

Donald Trump is not the first president to become ill while in the Oval Office, so how can history help us understand what happens, and what’s supposed to happen, when the president gets sick?

NBC News Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss can recall a number of presidencies that were shaped by illness and the president’s relationship with the public trust. But this time, he tells Trymaine Lee, “We have never been in a period even remotely like this before."

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Black Doctors Vetting the Vaccine

MS NOW — Thu, 1 Oct 2020 22:57:23 +0000

For six months, people across the country have been waiting for the same lifeline: a vaccine for the coronavirus. The U.S. government has pledged $10 billion to help drug makers develop and distribute a vaccine in record time through “Operation Warp Speed.”

But the emphasis on swiftness has left some people worried about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. California and New York have said they will assemble their own independent task forces to vet the vaccine, and recently, the National Medical Association, the oldest and largest organization for Black physicians, has said they will do the same.

The NMA’s longstanding role as trusted messengers in the Black community could prove crucial, because polling shows Black Americans are less likely than other groups to say they will get a coronavirus vaccine.

Host Trymaine Lee talks with Dr. Rodney Hood, an internal medicine physician and health equity advocate in San Diego who came up with the idea for the NMA’s task force. Dr. Hood describes why the task force is necessary, and how centuries of structural racism in medicine has led to generational health issues and heightened mistrust.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Presidential Debate: Race, Protests and Police

MS NOW — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 23:18:40 +0000

Tuesday night, Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Trump met in Cleveland, Ohio for the first Presidential Debate of 2020. For 90 minutes, the candidates debated topics ranging from the Supreme Court to COVID-19, as well as one segment on race and policing.

It was during that section that President Trump made the biggest news of the night in refusing to denounce white supremacists. He told the Proud Boys, a violent hate group, to “stand back and stand by.” Trump’s spokespeople have since claimed the president meant to tell them to “stand down,” but that’s not how social media and many Americans heard those words.

From a podium six feet away, Joe Biden, who has said he got into the race because of Trump’s Charlottesville comments, had his own past to answer for. He's one of the authors of the harsh 1994 Crime Bill. Biden has since championed policing reform, but he still hasn’t gone as far as many on his left would like and pushed for police defunding. In the debate, he walked a political tightrope with progressives on one side and moderate voters on the other.

Political analyst Tiffany Cross is a frequent contributor to MSNBC and the author of Say It Louder: Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy. She joined Trymaine Lee to unpack the debate.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Expanding the Supreme Court

MS NOW — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 23:00:00 +0000

President Donald Trump has nominated conservative favorite Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court. Democrats are calling on Republicans to follow the precedent they set in 2016, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings for President Obama’s pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia when he died eight months before the election.

But Republicans likely have the votes to confirm Barrett, and if they succeed, they will have a 6-3 advantage on the Supreme Court. In response, momentum is growing among Democrats around the idea of expanding the Supreme Court. Host Trymaine Lee talks with Aaron Belkin, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, and founder of the advocacy group Take Back the Court, who has spent the last few years trying to change minds on this issue. He argues court expansion is the only way to overcome the court’s conservative majority to better reflect the will of the American people.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Injustice for Breonna Taylor

MS NOW — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 23:20:40 +0000

Louisville activist Hannah Drake has been fighting for Breonna Taylor since the 26-year-old’s death in March. As a speaker and author, Hannah helped elevate Breonna’s story on social media, and was part of an effort to push the city council to pass Breonna’s Law – a ban on “no-knock” warrants.

The Louisville Metro Police Department had received court approval for this type of warrant in the botched drug raid at Breonna’s apartment on the night of March 13th, meaning they could enter without warning. The orders were later changed for police to identify themselves, but according to her boyfriend, they didn’t. So he fired a shot, and when officers returned fire, they struck Taylor multiple times.

For Hannah Drake, the last six months of her life have been focused on holding individuals accountable for Taylor’s death. But this week, a grand jury announced that none of the officers involved would be charged for Breonna’s death. One officer is facing a charge of wanton endangerment for firing into neighboring apartments. Without legal justice, where does that leave activists like Hannah today?

On Into America, Hannah sits down with Trymaine Lee to talk about Breonna’s life, and how she plans to honor Breonna’s memory going forward.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Restoring Voting Rights for Former Felons

MS NOW — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 23:15:28 +0000

With 41 days until Election Day, voters across the country are already casting their ballots. But in Florida, thousands of former felons can’t even register to vote. The problem? They’ve served their time, but they haven’t paid the court fees, fines and restitution – and that’s considered part of their sentence.

In 2018, Florida voters approved Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would allow those with felony convictions to register to vote, so long as the crime committed was not murder or sexual abuse. The new law made as many as 1.4 million Floridians with felony records eligible to register. But in 2019, the Governor of Florida signed a bill limiting those rights until felons have completed all the terms of their sentences, including the payment of court debts. Many are simply too poor to pay those debts or, because there is no central database of court fines and fees, it is impossible to know exactly what they owe.

A federal appeals court has upheld the law, and now, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition is leading the rush to raise money to pay off as many debts as possible before October 5, the voter registration deadline in Florida.

For more than a decade, Desmond Meade cycled in and out of the criminal justice system, mostly on felony drug charges. Now, Meade is the president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. In this episode, he discusses the personal struggles that led him to fight for voting rights, the work it took to get Amendment 4 passed, and the current fight to help people pay their fines so they can finally vote.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ACLU Years

MS NOW — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 23:19:26 +0000

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg accepted President Bill Clinton’s nomination to be the 107th justice on the US Supreme Court in 1993, she dedicated the moment to her mother. She said: “I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve; and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent her life facing discrimination because she was a woman: struggling to find work at a law firm despite being at the top of her law school class, and hiding her second pregnancy under lose clothes so she wouldn’t risk her job as a professor. Then, in 1972, she took on a role that would help lay the groundwork to end discrimination for herself and millions of other women. She joined the ACLU as the founding director of the Women’s Rights Project. In 1973 she was named General Counsel of the ACLU, and argued over 300 gender discrimination cases, 6 of which went before the Supreme Court.

On this episode of Into America, Justice Ginsburg’s former colleague Kathleen Peratis sits down with Trymaine Lee to discuss Ginsburg’s legal strategy over the years: challenging the law step by step, drawing lessons from the movement for racial justice, and taking on cases featuring men to make the point that gender bias hurts everyone.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Reclaiming Fire to Save the Forest

MS NOW — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 23:00:00 +0000

It’s hard to comprehend the scale of the wildfires burning across the west. Millions of acres have burned, thousands of homes and structures have been destroyed. Dozens of people are dead and more are missing. Hazardous air quality and apocalyptic skies have forced millions to stay inside.

Climate change is a major reason why these fires continue to get bigger, more frequent, and more destructive. But years of fire suppression means the forests are full of overgrown brush, which acts as fuel for these massive wildfires.

Native tribes like the Yuroks in far northern California used to regularly burn the land to clear the brush, until the government banned the practice for decades. But indigenous people are reclaiming their traditions of burning the land, and helping the environment in the process.

On the latest episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee talks with Margo Robbins, a Yurok tribal member and president of the Cultural Fire Management Council, about her work in resurrecting the practice of burning to help the land.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Reimagining Mental Health & Policing

MS NOW — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:00:00 +0000

People with mental illnesses are 16-times more likely to be killed by police compared to the general population. As deaths like those of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York gain national attention, cities are looking for alternatives to using police officers to respond to mental health emergencies. And many cities are turning to a model called CAHOOTS run out of White Bird Clinic in Eugene, Oregon. CAHOOTS stands for “Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets.” The community-based program trains, equips, and deploys mental health providers as first-responders. The name is a nod to the fact that the workers are in “cahoots” with the police, sometimes responding to 911 calls with officers, but often going out on their own, too.

The program launched 31 years ago, and they’re increasingly serving as a national model for a better approach to public safety. But they’re also looking critically at their work, and asking how, in the predominately white city of Eugene, CAHOOTS can do a better job reaching communities of color.

Trymaine Lee talks to Ebony Morgan, a crisis intervention worker and communications director for CAHOOTS. Ebony walks us through how the program operates, ways they’re trying to improve, and why this work is so personal for her.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into New Rules for School

MS NOW — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 23:17:56 +0000

When the coronavirus pushed school online, discipline went with it. Educators have been handing out Zoom suspensions and other remote consequences to keep the virtual class a safe and respectful learning environment. And for those kids who are back in the actual classroom, there are new rules about masks, even about coughing and sneezing.

Some experts worry these types of disciplines will have a disproportionate impact on students of color. Before the pandemic, Black students were three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students. Overall, Black, Hispanic, and Native children are punished more harshly than white children for similar school infractions.

Host Trymaine Lee talks about these concerns with Adaku Onyeka-Crawford, the Director of Educational Equity at the National Women’s Law Center, where she studies discipline in schools and works with educators to come up with better solutions.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into a Game Changer

MS NOW — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:03:52 +0000

College football is a multi-billion-dollar industry. So even as coronavirus spread, most schools pushed forward with the 2020 season. But as the pandemic and the racial justice movement exposed inequalities across the country, college football athletes, who aren’t paid for their work and the risks they take on the field, started to speak up.

Treyjohn Butler, a senior cornerback at Stanford University, was one of those students. He and other football players from his NCAA conference, the Pac-12, came together under a group called #WeAreUnited and wrote a list of demands that included better health care, racial justice, and compensation for student athletes.

On this episode of Into America, Treyjohn tells Trymaine why he thinks it’s the right time to change the way colleges treat their football players.

Further Reading:

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Into a Pivotal Election in a Wild Year

MS NOW — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:07:43 +0000

So far this year, we’ve heard the President of the United States say the only way he’ll lose his bid for re-election is if the vote is rigged. He's said he may not accept the results of the election. He’s even suggested that people vote twice. (That’s illegal, by the way...)

We’re 55 days out from the election, and this year is shaping up to be a wild ride. President Trump is sowing the seeds of distrust and more people will be voting by mail due to fears of coronavirus. It’s possible we may not know the results of the election by the time we go to bed on November 3rd.

Jonathan Allen is a senior political analyst for NBC News. He sat down with Trymaine Lee for Into America to talk about all the ways this election could play out in the days leading up to, and after, November 3rd.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading & Analysis from Jonathan Allen:

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Into Gettin' Fonky with Wynton Marsalis

MS NOW — Mon, 7 Sep 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Wynton Marsalis was born into a musical tradition. He grew up in New Orleans, home of the best jazz musicians around – including his father, jazz-great Ellis Marsalis.

But Wynton Marsalis is a master in his own right. Back in 1984, when he was just 22 years old, he won two Grammy awards for his performances in jazz and classical music. In 1997, Marsalis became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his record Blood on the Fields. Then in 2007, he released From the Plantation to the Penitentiary and it hit number two on the Billboard charts.

Marsalis now works as the artistic director at Jazz at Lincoln Center. That’s where, in 2018, he debuted the work that would lay the foundation of his newest album: “The Ever Fonky Lowdown.” The album is deeply political, narrated by actor Wendall Pierce – a high school friend of Marsalis. And it’s dedicated to his father, who passed away from coronavirus complications this spring.

On Into America, Marsalis talks with host Trymaine Lee about his writing process, how politics influences his music, and the magic of New Orleans.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Bun B is Standing Up

MS NOW — Thu, 3 Sep 2020 22:00:00 +0000

Hip hop legend Bun B has been involved in activism in the city of Houston for a long time. So when George Floyd, a longtime Houston resident, was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Bun stepped up. He organized a march for Floyd that drew 60,000 people, and he hasn’t let up since, attending the March on Washington and recording a new single about this moment.

On the latest episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks with Bun B about politics, how his small hometown of Port Arthur influenced his activism, how he's approaching his art in this time.

This episode was recorded live in partnership with The Texas Tribune Festival, a streaming virtual event happening all September long.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into More Than a Coach: John Thompson

MS NOW — Wed, 2 Sep 2020 23:45:58 +0000

Men’s basketball coach John Thompson, Jr was one of the greats. In his 27 seasons as the coach of the Georgetown Hoyas, he built a weak team into a powerhouse. Under his leadership, Georgetown won seven Big East titles and made it to the Final Four three times, even bringing home a national championship in 1984. He was the first Black coach to win the title. During his tenure, Thompson coached Hall of Famers Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, and Allen Iverson.

But he’s most remembered for the man he was off the court. Thompson was widely known as a mentor, a father figure, and an activist -- fighting to make sure his players, especially his Black players, felt supported and had a shot at a quality education.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee looks at the legacy of Coach Thompson. He’s joined by Jesse Washington, senior writer at The Undefeated. Washington also helped Thompson write his autobiography: “I Came As a Shadow,” set for release early next year.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading & Viewing:

The Into America team wants to hear from you about what’s happening in your community. Send feedback, questions, and story ideas to intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Find host Trymaine Lee on Twitter @trymainelee.

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Into Black America's Call to Arms

MS NOW — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 23:49:25 +0000

The panic of COVID-19 and high-profile Black deaths like those of Breonna Taylor and Geroge Floyd have led to a rise in Black gun ownership around the country. A survey from the National Shooting Sports Foundation found that gun dealers reported a 58-percent increase in Black customers in 2020, the most rapid growth of any ethnic group.

Twenty-four-year-old Jeneisha Harris is worried she could be another Breonna Taylor. Harris is a student and activist in Nashville, Tennessee. She grew up anti-gun, but feels vulnerable and wonders if she should arm herself.

On this episode of Into America, Jeneisha Harris tells Trymaine Lee about the pros and cons she’s weighing as she decides whether to get a gun. And Lee speaks with Philip Smith, the head of the National African American Gun Association about the long tradition of Black gun ownership, and why he thinks all Black people should be armed.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into "I Have a Dream"

MS NOW — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 23:01:58 +0000

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. More than 250,000 people gathered to hear Dr. King speak from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day, for the original March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Fifty-seven years later, organizers are taking to the nation’s capitol again. This time, they are calling the gathering the “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” March on Washington, an urgent reflection on the national uprising against police brutality.

In commemoration of that first march, host Trymaine Lee talks with Dr. Clarence Jones, a legal advisor, speech writer, and personal friend to Dr. King. Back in 1963, Dr. Jones wrote the first seven and a half paragraphs of the original speech, and is the only surviving member of the 1963 March on Washington planning committee. Dr. Jones reflects on the racial progress made since that day, and the urgency of the current movement for Black lives.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Being a Black Trump Supporter

MS NOW — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 23:40:53 +0000

With 68 days until the presidential election, the Republican National Convention is underway. This year, amid national protests against police violence and racism, the convention appeared to make a pointed effort to reach one unexpected audience: Black voters. While many Americans are frustrated with the system, the Trump campaign has outlined a strategy to reach this crucial voting bloc.

Black voters are typically seen as one “base” of the Democratic Party. But that doesn’t tell the full story. In 2016, Trump got just six percent of Black votes, according to NBC News exit polls. But he was more popular with Black men, 13% of whom voted for Trump in 2016. Could Republicans expect to do better in 2020? One Black male voter thinks so.

Sean Shewmake is a real estate agent and spoken word artist living in Lawrenceville, Georgia, a suburb northeast of Atlanta. He's also a Black man who voted for Trump in 2016 and plans to again in 2020. Shewmake talks with host Trymaine Lee about his experience growing up as a Black man in Indiana, his perspectives on white supremacy in politics, and why he will vote for Trump in November.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the NAACP vs the Postal Service

MS NOW — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 23:07:16 +0000

If you’re not getting your mail on time, you may not be alone. Cost-cutting measures from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy have created substantial delays in delivering mail in many parts of the US. And with many voters opting to vote-by-mail due to the pandemic, lawmakers are worried these cuts could threaten the integrity of the upcoming election. The House interrupted its summer recess to call DeJoy to testify. DeJoy insisted the USPS is fully capable of pulling off vote-by-mail this election.

But many states and organizations remain unconvinced. In a lawsuit filed last week, the NAACP claims the USPS is violating people’s civil rights in a “blatant attempt to disenfranchise voters of color.”

And the debate over these changes isn’t just about getting through November. Some measures, like cutting overtime, could also hurt workers. The Post Office has historically been an important ladder into the middle class for Black Americans, and today, its workforce is more than 20% Black.

In this episode of Into America, we talk to Jay Thurmond, a veteran Black postal worker about what it is like doing his job in this moment. Trymaine Lee sits down with NAACP President Derrick Johnson to understand what his organization is fighting for in its suit against the USPS.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the DNC and Black Lives

MS NOW — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 06:48:31 +0000

The Democratic National Convention—the first “virtual” one, due to COVID-19—has come to a close. Joe Biden has had his moment in the spotlight to accept the nomination for President, and Kamala Harris has made history as the first woman of color on a major party ticket.

Over four nights, the DNC convention featured harsh attacks on President Trump and dire warnings about the future of American democracy; a focus on issues like gun violence, climate change, child care, immigration and the power of women in politics; the voices of everyday Americans; and, featured speeches by many of the party’s “old guard.” But did the Democrats do enough to address the issue of racial justice, and to inspire younger Black voters who want rapid change?

On the latest Into America, Trymaine Lee talks to Jamira Burley, one of America’s high-profile Black millennial activists, who was featured in a conversation with Joe Biden at the convention. She supports the Biden/Harris ticket, but she hopes the party will seize on opportunities to inspire many younger voters of color, especially Black voters.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Rise of QAnon During the Pandemic

MS NOW — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 23:00:00 +0000

The vast internet conspiracy theory known as QAnon began in 2017 with a single post to the online message board site 4chan. The beliefs associated with QAnon range from the merely strange to the downright dangerous. Followers believe a ring of devil-worshipping pedophiles run the country and are plotting against President Trump, who they say is here to save the world. They say this Satanic ring includes top Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as Hollywood celebrities. QAnon’s beliefs are false, but they’ve seeped into the mainstream; a QAnon supporter from Georgia is likely to be elected to Congress in November.

QAnon aggressively pursues potential followers via social media, relying heavily on Facebook’s algorithms, which have often recommended increasingly extreme groups to users who have demonstrated an interest in things like alternative medicine and “energy shifts.” During the coronavirus pandemic, these baseless conspiracy theories are catching on with many people who are stuck at home and feeling lonely and vulnerable. This has serious consequences for the safety of the country; QAnon has pushed anti-mask and anti-vaccination rhetoric during the pandemic.

On the latest Into America, Trymaine Lee talks to Ben Collins, a reporter for NBC News who covers disinformation, extremism and the internet. He's been reporting on QAnon for years, and he says we should all be paying attention.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Black Women and the 19th Amendment

MS NOW — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 23:00:23 +0000

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified 100 years ago, on August 18, 1920, giving women the right to vote. But like many of the promises in the US Constitution, this was a victory primarily for white people. The suffrage movement was notoriously rife with anti-Blackness. So Black leaders like Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell paved their own way, aiming to undo racism and win voting rights for Black women.

As the United States celebrates a century milestone for 19th Amendment, we’re taking a moment to understand the role Black women played in the suffrage movement, and how that political participation has provided important lessons for today.

Martha Jones is a legal and cultural historian who studies Black women’s political participation. She’s a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of a new book entitled “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All.”

Jones joined Into America host Trymaine Lee to talk about the generations-long fight of Black women for full voting rights.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Coronavirus and the Classroom: The Biggest Online Learning Experiment Ever

MS NOW — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 23:00:00 +0000

This fall, millions of American students and teachers will head back to school. In California, for most kids that will mean continuation of remote learning. Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond believes that, if done right, this giant online learning experiment we’ve all been thrust into could revolutionize the future of education.

Dr. Darling-Hammond is the President of the California’s State Board of Education and the first Black woman to hold this role. In our final episode of our week-long series Coronavirus and the Classroom, Trymaine Lee talks with Dr. Darling-Hammond about the depth and severity of the digital divide and learning loss, along with the opportunities to close those gaps. According to Dr. Darling-Hammond, the next few months will force California schools to test out new learning models, teachers to innovate, and kids to think and learn outside the box.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Coronavirus and the Classroom: Teachers Swap Chalkboards for Apps

MS NOW — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 23:00:00 +0000

The debate over whether to re-open schools doesn’t just affect kids. This summer, teachers have found themselves ensnared in a nation-wide fight over school reopenings. In Florida, the largest teacher’s union sued the state over its plans to re-open. In Michigan, teachers organized a protest to stop school buses from leaving lots, raising their voices and signs, pleading summer camps to stay closed. Teachers are crafting mock gravestones. Some teachers have even started drafting their wills.

For Adeline Baltazar, a middle-school teacher in San Diego, June was a scary month. But soon after, her district decided to stay fully remote in the fall. In the latest episode in our series, Coronavirus and the Classroom, we look at this unfolding debate through a teacher’s eyes. Host Trymaine Lee talks to Adeline, or as her students like to call her, Ms. A, about the challenges she endured going online in the spring, her relief when school stayed online, and why she is surprisingly optimistic about the fall.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the V.P. Pick: Kamala Harris

MS NOW — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 05:00:14 +0000

Joe Biden finally has a running mate: Senator Kamala Harris.

The Senator from California is the first Black woman on a presidential ticket in U.S. history. Biden promised to pick a woman back in March, and over the past few months, calls for him to choose a Black woman grew louder. Harris is a moderate choice by Biden, a moderate Democratic candidate.

She was District Attorney in San Francisco and Attorney General of California before being elected to the Senate in 2017. Last year, Senator Harris was part of the most diverse group ever to run for president. But despite being an early frontrunner, Harris lost momentum and dropped out before the Iowa caucuses. But not before creating one of the most viral moments of the Democratic primary debates, when Harris criticized Biden for opposing integration efforts in the 1970s. Now Biden-Harris is the 2020 Democratic ticket.

Yamiche Alcindor is a White House correspondent for PBS Newshour and contributor for NBC News and MSNBC and she joins Trymaine Lee to discuss the strategy and significance in Biden choosing Harris, and what it means for November.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Coronavirus and the Classroom: Parents Get Ready for School, At Home

MS NOW — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 23:03:28 +0000

All over the country, policymakers, parents, and teachers are hotly debating whether to bring kids back to school. President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy Devos have insisted that schools must reopen, while major teacher unions are threatening to strike if schools reopen without adequate safety measures. But for more than 4 million American students, their back-to-school plans are sealed. At least 17 of the 20 largest school districts across the country have decided to go fully remote this coming fall. That includes the San Diego Unified District, which serves more than 100,000 students.

This week, we’re heading to San Diego as part of a week-long series, Coronavirus and the Classroom, to understand how the decision to stay online is affecting the local community. Trymaine Lee sits down with Kirsten Reckman, a frustrated working mom who is trying to figure out how to juggle work and childcare, all while making sure her 2nd grade son stays engaged and doesn’t fall behind this fall.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the End of the $600 Unemployment Check

MS NOW — Thu, 6 Aug 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Last week, many Americans got their last $600 unemployment check from the federal government. In Washington, Congress is at odds over whether to extend those benefits.

Meanwhile, unemployed Americans are now struggling to make do with less. According to an early study from the University of Chicago, two out of every three people qualified to receive the $600 extra would make more money unemployed than at their regular jobs. In Stockton, California, a chef named Selena Pollack was one of those people. While collecting unemployment, she was able to provide for her family and pay off debt. But COVID-19 cases in that county, San Joaquin, are currently some of the highest in the country, and without federal assistance, she doesn’t have enough money to pay her bills.

Michael Tubbs, the Mayor of Stockton, argues this reveals how little we value work in this country. And he wants to change that. In January 2019, Tubbs started a pilot program guaranteeing a basic income to some Stockton residents. 125 people started receiving $500 a month, no strings attached. In the pandemic, that support has been more critical than ever. He thinks other cities could follow suit.

Trymaine Lee talks with Selena Pollack about what it’s like to be jobless during this pandemic. And we hear from Mayor Tubbs who says now is the time to rethink what it means to make a living wage in America.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Joy Reid’s Primetime Moment

MS NOW — Wed, 5 Aug 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Growing up, Joy Reid loved to watch the news with her mother – and even remembers staying up late to watch coverage of the Iran Hostage Crisis as a middle schooler. Along the course of her career, Joy’s worked in local news, as a press secretary for the 2008 Obama campaign, and written books on American politics.

And she recently became the host of a new primetime show on MSNBC: The ReidOut, which premiered on July 20th with big-name guests such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. More than 2.5 million people tuned in.

This is Joy’s third show for MSNBC. She previously hosted an afternoon show called The Reid Report and AM Joy, which aired on weekends. With The ReidOut, Joy is now the first Black woman to host a national primetime news show since PBS NewsHour’s Gwen Ifill died in 2016, and the first Black woman to anchor a primetime network show in the history of cable TV.

On Into America, Reid tells Trymaine Lee what led to this moment, and how she plans to make the most of it.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Future of HBCUs

MS NOW — Mon, 3 Aug 2020 23:00:00 +0000

For more than 150 years, Howard University in Washington, D.C., has graduated high-profile alumni like former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, authors Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, and rapper Sean Combs. Like many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in recent years, Howard has faced dwindling enrollment and financial uncertainty. But renewed calls for social justice might be shifting that.

Last week, Mackenzie Scott, a philanthropist and ex-wife to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced she was donating $1.7 billion dollars to charitable causes, with tens of millions of dollars going to six prominent HBCUs. Howard University is one of them. It received $40 million. It is the largest gift from a single donor in the school’s entire 153 history.

Dr. Wayne Frederick, President of Howard University and an alum himself, believes that HBCUs, founded before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to serve primarily Black students, are in a unique position to respond to this historic moment. Host Trymaine Lee talks with Frederick about the financial uncertainty of running an HBCU and how the Scott gift will have an impact, how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting life on campus, and what the future may hold for all HBCUs, including Howard.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Morgan Freeman Reads the Last Words of John Lewis

MS NOW — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 19:14:19 +0000

The late Civil Rights icon and Georgia Congressman John Lewis was laid to rest on Thursday. But he had one final thing to say.

John Lewis’ last words appeared in The New York Times on Thursday in an essay titled “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation.” John Lewis wrote the essay shortly before his death and requested that it be published on the day of his funeral.

In this bonus episode of Into America, Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman reads the final words of his friend John Lewis. This reading was recorded for MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into a New Voting Rights Act

MS NOW — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 23:20:37 +0000

Congressman John Lewis was laid to rest this week at the age of 80, after a lifetime of fighting for civil rights and human dignity. As a young man, his life was almost cut short as he led a protest for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. That day — March 7, 1965 — became known as Bloody Sunday, as state troopers attacked the protesters with horses and billy clubs. Lewis was badly beaten, and his skull was fractured.

Broadcast images of Bloody Sunday put pressure on Congress and then-President Lyndon Johnson to pass the Voting Rights Act. The 1965 VRA eliminated racist voting practices such as poll taxes and literacy tests. It also put states and districts with especially discriminatory histories under federal oversight. But in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the VRA, undercutting its effectiveness.

Activists and political organizers have been working to ensure that this rollback of the VRA does not keep Black Americans from being able to cast their ballots, but voter suppression has still been a major concern throughout the country. Now, the passing of John Lewis is bringing renewed energy to the fight for the franchise.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks to political strategist LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, about the ongoing struggle for full voting rights.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Facing the Pandemic with a Disability

MS NOW — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

From the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, many officials warned it was crucial to slow the spread of the virus to protect what they called the most vulnerable people: the elderly and those with underlying conditions. The people who have been mentioned far less often are those with disabilities.

Having a disability isn’t a risk factor for COVID-19 on its own, but according to the CDC, people with disabilities often do have other health conditions that put them at risk. It can also be harder for some people to socially distance if they have caretakers or are in a group home setting.

It’s hard to know the full scope of the risk because there’s no comprehensive data on COVID rates among people with disabilities, but around the country, some group homes for disabled people have been coping with serious outbreaks.

On this episode of Into America, 30 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Trymaine Lee talks with disability rights advocate and writer Andrew Pulrang about how people with disabilities are weathering the pandemic and navigating the future.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Trayvon Generation with Elizabeth Alexander

MS NOW — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander is an author, a teacher, a philanthropist and a scholar. But most people know her as a poet. In 2009, she performed her poem “Praise Song for the Day,” at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, reminding us of the ancestors who’ve led us to the progress we see today. She urged us: “Say it plain: that many have died for this day.”

Alexander is now the President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the country’s largest funder of arts and culture. This year, they’re working with a grantmaking budget of $500 million. Every dollar of that will go towards social justice projects, including the newly launched “Million Book Project” to bring literature to prisons across the U.S.

Recently, Alexander published an intense and beautiful essay in the New Yorker magazine called “The Trayvon Generation,” about her sons, and all the other young Black Americans who’ve grown up knowing the trauma of Black death — often captured on video, reposted over and over again on social media.

On Into America, host Trymaine Lee talks to Elizabeth Alexander about pain, about philanthropy, and, of course, about poetry.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Into the Federal Response to Chicago’s Violence

MS NOW — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

When the federal government sent officers from the Department of Homeland Security to Portland, Oregon earlier this month to help guard city buildings, the city erupted in chaos. So officials in Chicago were skeptical when President Trump announced on Wednesday he would also be sending federal law enforcement agents to their city.

Nearly 200 agents from the FBI, DEA, ATF and other agencies are being sent to the city to help address a recent uptick in violence. The President’s announcement came just one day after a mass shooting in Chicago that left 15 people wounded. Crime rates in Chicago have been down overall during the pandemic, but shootings and killings have been on the rise. Despite the progress made in recent years to stop crime, homicides are now up 51% compared to this time last year. City residents and leaders are grieving and looking for solutions. But are federal agents the answer?

Kimberly Foxx, the Cook County State’s Attorney in Chicago, is the county's top prosecutor and one of the officials preparing to work with the federal agents on their way. Trymaine Lee talks with Foxx about her office’s plans ensure that the new federal efforts do not result in further violence in the city.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Conservatives Against Trump

MS NOW — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

There has been a slew of anti-Trump attack ads that have gone viral in the last few months. One ad shows the President as weak, sickly, and feeble. Another ad is a mock endorsement from Putin. These splashy, viral ads aren’t coming from the left, but from The Lincoln Project -- a political action committee run by long-time Republicans and Independents determined to defeat President Trump. This group includes conservatives like George Conway, husband to White House advisor Kellyanne Conway. They say the goal of these ads isn’t just to troll the president, but to “litigate the case against Donald Trump.”

And they are seeing some signs of success. The Lincoln Project raised $16.8 million last quarter. And a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll shows that 50% of voters say they strongly disapprove of the President and 50% say they won’t vote for him come November. But can this group of conservatives convince long-time Republicans to vote for a Democrat?

On this episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee sits down with Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen. Galen has worked as a strategist for President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain. And he explains the conservative strategy to persuade voters and unseat Donald Trump in 2020.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Remembering John Lewis

MS NOW — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 00:18:06 +0000

Bernard Lafayette first met John Lewis in 1958 when the two men were roommates at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee. They were both from the South, resented segregation, and wanted to do something about it.

They began organizing in Nashville and participated in sit-its and the Freedom Rides across the south. Over the years, Lafayette watched Lewis grow into a national figure, from leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and being the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, to becoming the ‘conscience of Congress’ as a Representative from Georgia.

Lafayette worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and was the National Coordinator for the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. He later became a scholar. Lafayette and Lewis remained close until Lewis's death on July 17, 2020. He was 80 years old.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks with Dr. Bernard Lafayette about his friendship with John Lewis, the protests of the 1960s, and what his passing means for the nation.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Please Stop Talking to Me About Race

MS NOW — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

When it comes to race relations, 2020 has caught a lot of us off guard. When protests broke out in response to the killing of Geroge Floyd, we saw diverse crowds out in the streets. More and more white people began asking what they could do to uproot the racism that plagues America. These conversations on race are crucial. But as writer Damon Young points out, they can also be really strange.

Damon Young is Black, a senior editor at The Root, and founder of the blog Very Smart Brothas. He’s also the author of “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker.” Young noticed an uncomfortable pattern: more and more white people want to start conversations about race. He says there’s a time and a place to talk about things like police violence, lynching, and slavery. That time is not while he’s taking a walk around his neighborhood or standing in line for ice cream.

Young wrote about his experience in a New York Times op-ed entitled, “Yeah, Let’s Not Talk About Race––Unless you pay me.” On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks with Young about how he finds humor in these moments and how it shapes his work as a Black writer.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Philadelphia D.A.’s Office

MS NOW — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

In 2017, Larry Krasner, a public defender and civil rights lawyer who had sued the Philadelphia police department multiple times during his career, made an unusual decision. He decided to run for Philadelphia District Attorney, the city’s top prosecutor. His goal was to reform that system from the inside. Krasner was part of a national wave of progressive prosecutors responding to calls for police reform.

Since taking office, Krasner has made efforts to stop the cycle of mass incarceration for low-level crimes while contending with a powerful police union and judges resistant to change. But Krasner says the city is still in the shadow of Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia’s former Police Commissioner and Mayor who was notorious for being “tough on crime.”

Now Philadelphia, along with several other major U.S. cities, is facing a spike in shootings and homicides, as well as a growing opioid crisis, on top of the pandemic. Some Philadelphians say Krasner should be doing more to keep the streets safe, others say his office is not doing enough to change the system. Trymaine Lee talks to District Attorney Larry Krasner about whether his reform agenda can survive.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Jamaal Bowman’s Insurgent Run

MS NOW — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 23:24:39 +0000

The votes are still being tallied, but progressive Democrat and political newcomer Jamaal Bowman is poised to beat out sixteen-term Congressman Eliot Engel in the primary race to represent New York’s 16th Congressional district. The district is the second most unequal in the state; it’s majority Black and Hispanic, but also stretches into some very wealthy, mostly white neighborhoods.

Eliot Engel is white, in his 70s, and chair of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee. And Bowman - who is Black, in his 40s, and a former middle school principal - is part of a new wave of candidates taking on the establishment of the Democratic party. Bowman’s gotten the backing of progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, and the Working Families Party, which recently teamed up with the Movement for Black Lives to form a Political Action Committee.

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with Jamaal Bowman about why he decided to enter politics and take on one of the most entrenched Democrats in Congress.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Police Chokeholds

MS NOW — Thu, 9 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

As he lay on the ground under the knee of a Minneapolis Police Officer, George Floyd called out “I can’t breathe” more than 20 times. In 2014, Eric Garner struggled to say the same words 11 times while being choked by an officer in New York. These high-profile deaths have been at the center of protests across the country. But in addition to the names we know, there are plenty that we don’t. According to a 2013 Department of Justice survey, of the police departments nationwide that serve more than 1 million people, 43 percent allow a neck restraint of some kind. There are no national statistics telling us how often these holds—sanctioned or not—end in death.

This summer we’ve seen conversations at the local and national levels about the use of police neck restraints. States like California and New York have moved to put an end to the controversial restraints; but why are they used in the first place? And is reform even possible?

Trymaine Lee speaks with Paul Butler, law professor and author of the book Chokehold, and Ed Obayashi, a Deputy Sheriff and a use-of-force training expert, about the history of chokeholds and the potential for reform. He also talks to Robert Branch, a Black man placed in a neck restraint by an officer in San Diego back in May of 2015.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the WNBA Bubble

MS NOW — Wed, 8 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Professional sports teams are getting back into the game, against the backdrop of two national crises: the relentless spread of coronavirus, and the national demands for racial justice. For the WNBA, the game plan is two-fold: practicing and playing in “the bubble,” and dedicating the 2020 season to social justice.

The league’s 137 players will spend the next few months living and playing on a sports compound in Florida, with extraordinary medical protocols and protections. Teams are arriving this week at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, where they are scheduled to tip off their season at some point in July, without fans in the stands. And a handful of players have not yet been cleared to join them, after testing positive for the virus.

The league is also responding to the national calls for racial justice in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and to the growing number of players who want to raise their voices and use their visibility to work for change. The league has announced that the 2020 season will be dedicated to social justice initiatives, with a special focus on women like Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor and Vanessa Guillen, who "have been the forgotten victims of police brutality and racial violence.”

Host Trymaine Lee talks with Gabby Williams, power forward for the Chicago Sky. Williams reflects on what it’s like to be isolated at the WNBA compound in Florida and what it means to use her position in the current political moment.For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Resuming Federal Executions

MS NOW — Mon, 6 Jul 2020 23:45:00 +0000

On July 13th, Daniel Lewis Lee is set to be the first prisoner executed by the federal government in 17 years. Executions have decreased on the federal and state level since their height in the 1990s, and for the first time in decades, a majority of Americans support life imprisonment over the death penalty. But Attorney General Bill Barr announced last month that four inmates would be scheduled for execution in rapid succession starting next week.

Host Trymaine Lee speaks with Yale Law professor Miriam Gohara, who spent years representing clients on death row for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, on the long complicated history of the death penalty in America and how the demands of the movement for Black lives is connected to the fight against capital punishment.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Black Trans Liberation

MS NOW — Thu, 2 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Black trans women have been central to the movement for gay rights and the fight for racial justice since their inceptions. But they have always been sidelined by the very movements they helped create. Black Trans women continue to face high rates of violence, poverty and suicide and are often the victims of misogyny and white supremacy.

Raquel Willis, a Black transgender activist and the director of communications for the Ms. Foundation, a nonprofit fighting for women’s rights, is trying to change that. This month, in the middle of Pride, she stood before a crowd of thousands and said, “Let today be the last day you ever doubt Black trans power.”

Host Trymaine Lee sits down with Raquel to discuss her efforts to prioritize her Black trans women in both the LGBTQ community and the movement for Black lives, and why we all need to do the work of rethinking gender.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into ‘My Body is a Monument’

MS NOW — Wed, 1 Jul 2020 23:54:02 +0000

In recent weeks, the debate over monuments, street names and other relics of the Confederacy has intensified. A statue of Jefferson Davis was pulled down in Richmond, Virginia. In Louisville, Kentucky, a monument depicting a Confederate officer was removed from the city square. And on Tuesday, Mississippi decided to remove the Confederate symbol from the state flag.

There are those who argue that tearing these statues down erases our history. And others who say they must come down if we hope to create meaningful systemic change.

Caroline Randall Williams is a poet and writer in residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. And in a recent New York Times opinion piece she makes a different argument for why these monuments must come down.

“My body is a monument,” she writes. “My skin is a monument.”

Host Trymaine Lee talks with Caroline Randall Williams about the sexual violence that has left a legacy of the Confederacy in her blood, and about why it’s time for the monuments to come down.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Protecting Florida Farmworkers

MS NOW — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 23:58:41 +0000

The state of Florida is seeing record highs of coronavirus cases as the pandemic stretches into its fifth month. More than 140,000 residents have tested positive for the virus and the state is reversing some of its efforts to reopen the economy.

For weeks, Governor Ron DeSantis resisted statewide closures and social distancing while the rural community of Immokalee raised concerns about the virus and requested more testing and PPE.

Immokalee is home to thousands of migrant farmworkers, some whom are undocumented or on temporary guest worker visas. During the pandemic they’ve been deemed “essential” by the federal government. Now, Immokalee has the highest number of cases of any zip code in the state of Florida.

Host Trymaine Lee talks to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers about their efforts to protect farmworkers in Florida and beyond, as the agricultural season shifts and the nation’s food supply is threatened. Gerardo Reyes Chávez is a leader of CIW who spent many years as a farmworker in Mexico and Florida, starting when he was 11. Greg Asbed co-founded the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in 1993.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into a New Generation of Black Candidates

MS NOW — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 23:13:43 +0000

As people look to sustain the movement for racial justice, they are turning to the ballot box.

Hundreds of Black candidates are running in local races, state races, and Congressional races all across the country in 2020. After weeks of protest, will we see a wave of Black candidates elected as an answer to those calls for change?

Host Trymaine Lee speaks with two women who are trying to bring racial justice to the electoral system. Political strategist Jessica Byrd felt called into the movement while watching the Ferguson uprisings, and Sybrina Fulton’s journey through activism to politics began when her son Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by police in 2012.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Reparations with Nikole Hannah-Jones

MS NOW — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 23:00:00 +0000

There is a pervasive wealth gap between Black and white Americans, the result of centuries of systemic violence and racism. Today, Black families have just 10% of the wealth white families have accumulated. New York Times staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones says this racial wealth gap isn’t an accident. It’s the product of over 400 years of slavery, racial segregation, and discrimination. In her cover story, “What is Owed,” for the New York Times Magazine, Hannah-Jones explains how the US government has been complicit in preventing Black people from accumulating wealth.

And she argues that the only solution is reparations, restitution paid by the U.S. government to the descendants of enslaved people.

In this episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee sits down with Hannah-Jones to talk about her seminal piece and why this may be the moment when the idea of reparations just might become a reality. She explains what reparations might look like and why they are more urgent than ever.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Into the Kentucky Primary

MS NOW — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 23:04:05 +0000

On Tuesday, Kentucky will hold its primary election after a month-long delay caused by COVID-19. County clerks have reduced the number of polling places by 95% and voters have requested a record number of absentee ballots.

The challenges to voting could have a major impact on the Democratic Senate primary, which has shifted dramatically in recent weeks. For the first time, state representative Charles Booker, a 35-year-old Black progressive, is polling ahead of his white moderate challenger, Amy McGrath. Both candidates are running for a shot at unseating Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the fall.

Host Trymaine Lee talks to Cassia Herron, Chairperson of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, about the influence of national protests on Charles Booker’s rise, the state of Kentucky politics, and the pandemic shaping how and if Americans vote.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Can You Hear Us Now: Juneteenth

MS NOW — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 23:06:45 +0000

President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery on January 1, 1963. But it wasn’t until more than two years later – on June 19, 1965 – that enslaved people in the state of Texas were finally told that they were free. The anniversary of that day has become known as Juneteenth.

This Juneteenth, 2020, America is in the midst of a racial reckoning. A pandemic is disproportionately killing Black Americans, and violence against Black people continues to be caught on camera, sparking cries for change.

Into America host Trymaine Lee convened a special panel for NBC News Now called Can You Hear Us Now: Juneteenth. He and his panelists wrestled with America’s core question of freedom, and whether this dream can and will ever be a reality for Black Americans.

Guests included: Dr. Peniel Joseph, from the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at UT-Austin; playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith; Tiffany Crutcher, whose twin brother Terence Crutcher killed by police in 2016; Wes Moore, of the Robin Hood Foundation; and NBC BLK reporter Janell Ross.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Coalition Building with Bishop Barber

MS NOW — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 23:00:00 +0000

With national protests and wide social unrest, 2020 feels to some like 1968. That year, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. launched The Poor People’s Campaign. He called for a revolution around economic justice and a movement to unite people against poverty, racism, and other forms of oppression.

In 2018, organizers resurrected the cause, re-establishing The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Host Trymaine Lee talks to Rev. Dr. William J Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach and Co-Chair of the Poor People's Campaign about the importance of building coalitions for lasting change, and the Campaign’s upcoming virtual march on Washington.

MSNBC will stream “The Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington” on Saturday, June 20, from 10am to 12:30pm EST on MSNBC.com and the MSNBC Youtube Channel.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Future of DREAMers

MS NOW — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 23:25:40 +0000

In 2012, President Obama announced DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – to give undocumented people brought to the US as minors the chance to stay in the country without fear of deportation. But less than a year into his term, President Trump rolled back the policy. The move was met with protest and legal action and now the Supreme Court is weighing whether the administration’s decision to wind down DACA is allowed.

Luis Cortes Romero is one of the lawyers fighting on behalf of DACA. At just 31 years old he was present for the Supreme Court oral arguments last fall. And as one of more than 700,000 DACA recipients across the country, this case is personal for him.

The Court is expected to issue a ruling on DACA at the end of June. Ahead of the decision, Into America host Trymaine Lee sat down with Luis to learn more about his personal story, and the SCOTUS case that could decide his future.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Killing of Rayshard Brooks

MS NOW — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 23:22:14 +0000

Another unarmed Black man was killed by police over the weekend, this time in Atlanta. His name was Rayshard Brooks and he was 27 years old.

The officer who shot Brooks has been fired, and the police chief has resigned, while across the country, protests against police brutality and racism continue.

NBC News correspondent Blayne Alexander has been reporting the story in Georgia and spoke to Brooks’s wife over the weekend. She and Trymaine also talk about the emotional toll of being a Black journalist covering this moment.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Defunding the LAPD

MS NOW — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 23:21:07 +0000

‘Defund the police’ has become a familiar rallying call at protests across the country. It’s a push to reduce the size of police department budgets, in order to reallocate resources to other parts of the community. And a few cities leaders are listening.

Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced his commitment to reallocating $150 million of the LAPD budget to communities of color in the upcoming fiscal year. This comes after years of attempted reform and decades of tension between the LAPD and the city’s Black population.

Trymaine Lee speaks with LA City Councilman Curren Price, Black Lives Matter leader Melina Abdullah, and historian Max Felker-Kantor, author of Policing Los Angeles, to find out how LA’s history of policing informs the Mayor’s current move and whether this step towards reform goes far enough.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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BONUS: 8 Minutes 46 Seconds with Trymaine Lee

MS NOW — Tue, 9 Jun 2020 21:00:00 +0000

Into America host Trymaine Lee joins Chris Hayes, host of the podcast Why Is This Happening to discuss the current moment of protest.

If you listen to anyone about this time of rage and grief and action, make it Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Trymaine Lee. From his origins reporting on police and crime in Philadelphia to his nights covering Ferguson in 2014 to his Emmy Award-winning work on the lasting trauma of the violence in Chicago, Lee offers a raw and insightful perspective on this national moment.

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Into Protest and the NFL

MS NOW — Tue, 9 Jun 2020 01:17:02 +0000

The nationwide movement against police brutality and racism have reignited the debate around protests about the same issues from players in the NFL. Last week, comments made by quarterback Drew Brees about protest and the flag led to a wave of criticism from Black players inside the league.

Brees, who is white, has apologized, repeatedly. And now the NFL – the same league that banned kneeling on the field just two years ago - is making their own statement about how they plan to support Black players.

NFL wide receiver Brandon Marshall was playing for the New York Jets when Colin Kaepernick first took a knee in 2016. He talks to host Trymaine Lee about his response at the time to protests on the field, why he is approaching this moment differently, and whether the league and its fans are ready for real change.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Religious Freedom v Public Health

MS NOW — Sat, 6 Jun 2020 21:00:00 +0000

The regulations designed to stop the spread of coronavirus have infiltrated every part of our lives, including religion. Across the country, worship services have gone online or even into parking lots. But some churches are pushing back.

Host Trymaine Lee talks with a pastor in North Carolina who sued over restrictions on indoor services. Plus, NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams explains how governments and the courts are balancing freedom of religion and public safety.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into an American Uprising: James Clyburn on Lessons from History

MS NOW — Fri, 5 Jun 2020 21:00:15 +0000

There have been nearly two weeks of national protests and collective unrest following the police killing of George Floyd. But for some, it is yet another step in the long march of progress.

South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn has been fighting for racial justice his entire life. He started at age 12 as the youth chapter of his local NAACP chapter and today is the highest ranking Black legislator in Congress. His advice to protesters today? “Stay steady, stay focused.”

Trymaine Lee sits down with Congressman Clyburn to discuss what leadership from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden looks like and the lessons from history that fill him with both fear and hope for the future.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into an American Uprising: Talking to Kids About Racism

MS NOW — Thu, 4 Jun 2020 23:11:44 +0000

Most Black parents had “the talk” about race and racism with their children, but far fewer non-Black parents have. And “the talk” matters – for all kids -- because what we learn when we’re young sticks with us. So, as the world protests the death of George Floyd and other Black people at the hands of police, how can parents best help their kids understand what’s happening, and how to build a better world?

Host Tyrmaine Lee speaks to Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, a leading expert on how to talk to kids about race and racism, especially at this critical moment, and why starting young is so critical.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading and Viewing:

Assimilation Blues: Black Families in a White Community Beverly Daniel Tatum
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race
Daring to Educate: The Legacy of the Early Spelman College Presidents
Can We Talk about Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation (Race, Education, and Democracy)
Is My Skin Brown Because I Drank Chocolate Milk? | Beverly Daniel Tatum | TEDx Stanford

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Into an American Uprising: White Accountability

MS NOW — Wed, 3 Jun 2020 23:20:38 +0000

One thing feels different about the current protests we are seeing following the recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery: the composition of the crowds.

In some parts of the country, white Americans are showing up. They are protesting, taking the knee, and flooding social media. There seems to be a renewed call for white accountability. But is posting and protesting enough? And will this energy last?

Trymaine Lee talks to Tim Wise, an anti-racist essayist, author and educator, about what white people can do to dismantle the systems of inequality in this country.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Tim Wise’s Recommended Reads:

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendi
How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi
White Rage, Carol Anderson
The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985, James Baldwin
Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy, Maggie Anderson
Raising White Kids, Jennifer Harvey
White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, Ashley W. Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, Michael Eric Dyson

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Into an American Uprising: Can You Hear Us Now?

MS NOW — Wed, 3 Jun 2020 00:30:00 +0000

As protests and riots continue following the recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, NBC News Now and NBCBLK convene a virtual conversation called Can You Hear Us Now? Trymaine Lee moderates this discussion on race, civil unrest and what it’s like to be Black in America with some of the biggest thinkers, policy makers, actors and activists of this moment.

We hear from Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, co-Founder of Campaign Zero Brittany Packnett Cunningham and actor Don Cheadle. NBCBLK reporter Janell Ross joins from the ground in Minneapolis.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading and Viewing:

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Into an American Uprising: Keith Ellison on Prosecuting George Floyd’s Death

MS NOW — Mon, 1 Jun 2020 23:04:51 +0000

Tens of thousands of people across the nation took to the streets this weekend to protest racism and police brutality in the wake of the suspected murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in police custody last week in Minneapolis.

On Sunday night, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz tapped state Attorney General Keith Ellison to take the lead in the Floyd case with help from the Hennepin County District Attorney’s Office. Ellison was elected in 2018 after representing Minnesota’s 5th Congressional district for 12 years in Congress. He is the first African American to be elected to statewide office in Minnesota.

Host Trymaine Lee talks with Ellison about his approach to reviewing the facts in the case, whether or not there could be more charges against the officers involved, and what it will take to create systemic change in this country.

Get NBC's most up-to-date coverage of the death of George Floyd here.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into Delivering an Election

MS NOW — Thu, 28 May 2020 21:00:00 +0000

The US Postal Service reaches every corner of America – from cities to small towns. In the midst of a pandemic, postal carriers are still delivering the mail, ensuring that people can pay their bills, keep up to date on medication, and connect with loved ones – even as most of us stay home to stop the spread of coronavirus.

But for years, the post office has been in financial decline – over the last 11 years the service has lost $69 billion. Postmaster General Megan Brennan estimates that without government assistance, the office could run out of cash by the end of September. And on top of all this – the USPS will play a major role in the November election. Because of the pandemic, voting-by-mail is expected to be a popular choice come fall. But could a hamstrung postal service hurt the election process?

On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee sits down with NBC News Business Correspondent Stephanie Ruhle to understand the financial struggles facing the post office. Plus, a former deputy postmaster general gives an inside look at how the funding debate in Washington, DC could impact the election this fall.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further reading:

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Into Comedy in a Crisis with Michelle Buteau

MS NOW — Mon, 25 May 2020 21:00:00 +0000

The impact of coronavirus has been devastating, but while we wait for a treatment or a vaccine, laughter may be the next best medicine.

Comedian, actress, podcast host and author Michelle Buteau is taking time during quarantine to slow down, reflect and stay creative. Host Trymaine Lee sits down with Buteau, who is at home in the Bronx with her twins, to discuss the value of comedy in a pandemic.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading and Viewing:

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Into Joe Biden and the Women’s Vote

MS NOW — Thu, 21 May 2020 21:00:00 +0000

The 2020 election season was thrown a curve ball when the spread of coronavirus across the U.S intensified in March. By early April, former Vice President Joe Biden was the only candidate left standing.

Around the same time that Biden became the apparent nominee, a woman named Tara Reade alleged in a podcast interview that Biden sexually assaulted her when she was a staffer on his senate team in 1993.

Recent polling shows voters are split on whether or not they believe the allegation against Biden. When it comes to women voters, will this allegation hurt Biden’s bid for the presidency?

Host Trymaine Lee speaks with NBC News Political Reporter Ali Vitali about her original reporting on the allegation against Joe Biden, including her conversation with Reade herself. Lee and Vitali also talk to two different women about how they are processing the allegation and what it means for their vote come November.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into the Future of Flying

MS NOW — Mon, 18 May 2020 21:38:28 +0000

The bottom has dropped out for America’s airlines. More than 90 percent of passengers have disappeared. Airports feel deserted. And despite a huge government bailout, there’s growing concern that not all the major carriers will survive past September. Meanwhile, passengers are unsure whether it is safe to fly and there’s a whole new routine for getting from place A to place B that involves more than masks and hand sanitizer.

NBC Correspondent Tom Costello has been covering the airline industry for 15 years, and says he’s never seen anything like this, for the industry or the flying public.

Trymaine Lee talks to Tom about what the airlines are doing – and not doing – to win back the public’s confidence and save their businesses. No matter what, flying may never be the same.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into Tracking Coronavirus in Nursing Homes

MS NOW — Thu, 14 May 2020 21:00:00 +0000

One of the earliest outbreaks of coronavirus in the United States happened in a nursing home in Washington state, where dozens of people died. Over 26,000 COVID-19 deaths can now be linked to long-term care facilities. Yet, we still don’t have numbers from the federal government tracking the outbreak in nursing homes.

In early April, NBC national investigative reporter Suzy Khimm and her reporting partner Laura Strickler began looking into the numbers themselves – reaching out to state health departments to understand the scope of the problem.

For Suzy, this assignment is personal: in March, her family received word that the virus had reached her father-in-law's nursing home. On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks to Suzy about how that news propelled her reporting. They dive into the numbers, where things stand with federal tracking, and why data matters during a crisis.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into the Movement for Ahmaud Arbery

MS NOW — Mon, 11 May 2020 23:16:52 +0000

Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed on February 23rd in Brunswick, Georgia. His family says he was going on a one of his regular jogs through his suburban neighborhood when two armed white men, a father and son, Gregory and Travis McMichael, confronted him on a shady street. The men claim they thought Arbery was a burglary suspect, that he went for Travis’s gun and that they were acting in self defense.

The killing didn’t garner widespread attention until last week, when a grainy cell phone video showing the altercation and the last moments of Arbery’s life appeared on the local news. The video spread across social media and Amaud Arbery’s name became a hashtag. The recording sparked national outrage and propelled local law enforcement to arrest Gregory and Travis McMichael. The arrests came 74 days after the shooting.

Host Trymaine Lee talks with Reverend Al Sharpton, longtime civil rights leader, founder of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, about his fight for justice for Arbery, despite the delays and the limitations of organizing during a pandemic.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into Mental Health and Lost Jobs

MS NOW — Thu, 7 May 2020 21:00:00 +0000

This pandemic has left millions of Americans without a job and unable to look for a new one. Another 3.2 million people filed jobless claims last week, bringing the total to 33 million since coronavirus hit. Experts predict that the US unemployment rate is now somewhere around 20 percent, a rate approaching the Great Depression.

Host Trymaine Lee talks with Anchor of Sunday Nightly News and Senior National Correspondent. Kate Snow about how unemployed Americans are dealing with the new anxieties created by this crisis, and where people can turn for help.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading and Viewing:

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Into the Team Racing Toward a Vaccine

MS NOW — Mon, 4 May 2020 22:08:03 +0000

We’ve been hearing for weeks that a vaccine for coronavirus is what’s needed before life returns to some type of normalcy. But under normal circumstances, vaccine development is a long, complex process, that takes on average, 10 years, according to the National Institutes of Health. But the man in charge of the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center is trying to significantly shorten that timeline.

The center’s director, Dr. John Mascola, feels optimistic that a vaccine for coronavirus could be ready by early 2021. His team is working with private entities - and with governments around the world - to fast-track a solution to this problem.

On this episode of Into America, Dr. Mascola talks to host Trymaine Lee about herd immunity, the anti-vaccine movement, and about the steps necessary to get millions of Americans access to a coronavirus vaccine.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into the Survival of Main Street

MS NOW — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 21:00:00 +0000

Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, but recent years haven’t been so kind to them. The 2008 financial crisis left Main Street in a precarious position, and now the coronavirus pandemic has left millions of small business owners at risk of not being able to reopen their doors.

Take Andrew Gaouette. At Mutt Waggin’, his pet supply shops in southeastern Massachusetts, he has seen his sales drops 60 percent. The government is offering relief to small businesses through emergency lending programs like the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, but so far, Andrew hasn’t gotten any money. The demand is so great that many owners like Andrew are worried they will never see the benefits.

This week, host Trymaine Lee talks with NBC News senior financial reporter Gretchen Morgenson about the state of Main Street, and what this crisis means for its future.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into 2020 with Stacey Abrams

MS NOW — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 22:08:11 +0000

Stacey Abrams has been making a very public case for why she would be a strong running mate for the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, Joe Biden. She’s not shy about her desire to serve, why she believes her experience is relevant, and whether Biden should choose a woman of color for the ticket.

As the founder of Fair Fight, a national organization to ensure voting rights, Abrams told us that regardless of whether she’s on the ticket, she wants Georgia and states across the country to take steps to ensure safe elections this fall.

In this Monday episode of Into America, host Trymaine Lee talks to Abrams about the VP nomination, the November elections, and about COVID-19 in her home state of Georgia.

The Into America team wants to hear from you about what’s happening in your community. Send feedback, questions, and story ideas to intoamerica@nbcuni.com. Find host Trymaine Lee on Twitter @trymainelee.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into Dirty Air

MS NOW — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 21:00:00 +0000

Black Americans are dying from COVID-19 at a disproportionally high rate. One of the reasons why is proximity to pollution.

In St. James Parish, Louisiana residents have been fighting for decades to stop industry-related pollution that causes a high prevalence of cancer, hypertension and other diseases. Those health disparities are now making residents a target for COVID-19. St. James and neighboring St. John the Baptist Parishes are among the 20 U.S. counties with the highest per-capita death rate from Coronavirus.

Host Trymaine Lee interviews Sharon Lavigne, a community leader and lifelong resident of St. James, who is fighting for clean air. And Dr. Robert Bullard, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University, explains the link between race, health and the environment.

The Into America team wants to hear from you about what’s happening in your community. Send feedback, questions, and story ideas to intoamerica@nbcuni.com.

Find host Trymaine Lee on Twitter @trymainelee.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Into Music as a Lifeline

MS NOW — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 21:08:44 +0000

What do a famous DJ, an indie musician, and an all-girls choir have in common? It’s simple: a love of music. As we continue to collectively distance ourselves during this global pandemic, people are creating and listening to music to stay connected and bring joy to each other.

This week, host Trymaine Lee talks about the power of music in the time of quarantine with writer and producer Bonsu Thompson. In this episode, we hear performances from Nashville artist Rachel Baiman, and members of the Seattle Girls Choir who have taken their musical talents online. After all, the show must go on.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

The Story Behind the Greatest Quarantine Party of 2020

Featured Recordings:

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Into an Outbreak Behind Bars

MS NOW — Thu, 9 Apr 2020 21:12:13 +0000

Prisons are hotbeds of infection. People live in close quarters, where they often struggle to have access to soap and hot water. As COVID-19 sweeps the country, these men and women are doing everything they can to avoid getting sick. As many prisons reduce visitation rights, families that are already separated are struggling to remain in contact.

This week, host Trymaine Lee talks to a Colorado woman who is struggling to stay in touch with her incarcerated husband as the outbreak intensifies. We hear from corrections officials in New York and Colorado about the steps being taken to reduce the risk of coronavirus behind bars. And Dateline NBC producer Dan Slepian takes us inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility to meet JJ Velazquez. Velazquez describes how social dynamics inside prison are changing as fears of an outbreak grow.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into Life and Loss in a Pandemic

MS NOW — Thu, 2 Apr 2020 21:00:00 +0000

There are moments in life that call for celebration and communion. When a baby is born and when a loved one dies, we cook meals, share stories and help out where we can. These moments of life and death are the moments that pull us together.

But in the age of COVID-19, we are told to keep our distance. To prevent the spread of the virus, hospitals around the country are placing restrictions on who can be present in the delivery room. And there are limits on who can remain by the side of someone who is dying.

In this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee speaks with a first-time expecting mom about how the coronavirus outbreak is changing her birth plan. And MSNBC contributor Eric Deggans talks about the death of his mother and having to coordinate a funeral that many could only attend online. These are stories of life and loss in a pandemic.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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Into Coronavirus for the Uninsured

MS NOW — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 21:00:00 +0000

Coronavirus is continuing to spread and Americans are relying on the healthcare system to save them if they get sick. But what if you’re one of the 30 million Americans who are uninsured?

Penny Wingard is one of them. As a breast cancer survivor, she’s immunocompromised and facing uncertainty about how to get proper care without coverage. In Charlotte, North Carolina, where Penny is from, federally funded community health centers are on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic for the uninsured. The toll that coronavirus is taking, both on the patients and the centers’ operations, may be irreversible.

Host Trymaine Lee talks with Phil McCausland, national reporter for NBC News, about his reporting on the healthcare gap in North Carolina and the patients and providers hoping the system can survive this outbreak.

If you or someone you know is living without health insurance, find a Community Health Center in your area on the website.

Read Phil McCausland’s piece here.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into Democracy Delayed

MS NOW — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 21:00:00 +0000

This week, the coronavirus outbreak reached all 50 states and is now responsible for more than 140 deaths. Doctors and government officials are scrambling to address the problem.

As schools close, employers send their workers home, and entertainment venues go dark, Americans are also wondering how the spread of the coronavirus will impact the 2020 election. This week’s primary states saw an increase in absentee ballots, as people heeded the guidance of the CDC to avoid crowded spaces. And Louisiana became the first state to postpone its primary, with several others following suit.

This week, Into America goes into the intersection of politics and a pandemic. Host Trymaine Lee speaks with the Louisiana Secretary of State about the state’s decision to delay its Democratic primary. And we hear from a Georgia voter who worries how the delays in her state could impact voter turnout.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

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Into the Future of Lordstown, Ohio

MS NOW — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 21:00:00 +0000

The Mahoning Valley in northeast Ohio is in the middle of an economic transition.

Manufacturing jobs have been leaving the region for decades, but the closure of the General Motors Lordstown factory last year was a major blow to the community. Some families were split apart as GM employees took transfers to other plants. Others are still mourning the departure of steady union jobs. But new opportunities in technology and warehouse distribution are coming to the area.

Residents near Lordstown are no stranger to promises. In 2017, President Trump came to the region, saying he would bring jobs back. Now, voters in this swing district must choose whether to back the President or one of his Democratic challengers.

What will these changes mean for the future of the region? Host Trymaine Lee talks with National Digital Reporter Erin Einhorn about her reporting in the Mahoning Valley, why voters in the area are divided on their pick for 2020, and how the local community is working to carve out a new economy after significant economic loss.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

In Ohio town grieving lost jobs, voters are deeply divided on President Trump

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Into the Fight for Lindsey Graham's Seat

MS NOW — Thu, 5 Mar 2020 22:00:00 +0000

Lindsey Graham is a giant in politics. The three-term Republican Senator has served more than two decades in Congress. He’s now a close ally to President Donald Trump.

He’s also up for re-election in 2020, and for the first time ever he’s facing a serious challenge to his South Carolina Senate seat. The fight comes from Jaime Harrison, a young, black Democrat, and a relative newcomer to the national stage. Harrison has raised more money than any Democrat running for the seat in state history, but he’s still a relative unknown.

In this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee talks to Harrison and Graham’s campaign, to find out why both believe they will win. And we visit the red city of Greenville, to talk to a voter who has supported Graham in the past and is now backing Harrison.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

South Carolina voters with no insurance, deep medical debt swayed by health care

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Into Bloomberg’s Legacy of Stop and Frisk

MS NOW — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 22:00:00 +0000

Days before announcing his candidacy, Michael Bloomberg apologized for the use of stop-and-frisk, a policing tactic he championed as Mayor of New York City. In their search for weapons, the New York Police Department made nearly 4.5 million stops over the span of a decade. Eighty-eight percent of people stopped were innocent, and the majority were Black and Latino boys and men.

Now, in order to have a real shot at the Democratic nomination, the former Mayor needs the support of Black voters. But will his decision to support stop and frisk hurt his chances?

In this episode, host Trymaine Lee goes into East New York, a community that experienced more stops than any other part of the city. Plus, a look at whether Bloomberg’s efforts to shore up support with Black voters nationwide will pay off.

For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica.

Further Reading:

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