Race

National

Big Companies Are Finding Out They Need Help With Diversity Messaging

4:26pm June 16, 2021

NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with DEI consultant Lily Zheng about how the diversity, equity and inclusion industry has changed after 2020's racial injustice protests and how companies are responding.

Colette Baptiste-Mombo and her family at Jackson Memorial High School in 1974

National

An Immigrant Family Navigates Generational Trauma

3:10pm June 16, 2021

Colette Baptiste-Mombo and her family moved to an all-white suburb at the height of the civil rights era. She shares how racist attacks changed her life, and how she deals with generational trauma.

Visitors walk around the outside of the Alamo in San Antonio.

'Forget The Alamo' Author Says We Have The Texas Origin Story All Wrong

2:22pm June 16, 2021

by Dave Davies

In a new book, Bryan Burrough and co-writers Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford challenge the historical lore of the Alamo — including the story that Davy Crockett refused to surrender.

People observe a moment of silence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington on June 19, 2020, to mark Juneteenth.

National

Companies Making Juneteenth A Paid Holiday Say It's The Right Thing To Do

11:43am June 16, 2021

by Marisa Peñaloza

Companies are responding to a social movement fueled by the killing of George Floyd, a 47-year-old Black man who died on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis while in police custody.

Juneteenth marks when enslaved people in Texas learned they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation.

Senate Unanimously Approves A Bill To Make Juneteenth A Public Holiday

6:42pm June 15, 2021

by Alana Wise

Juneteenth is an annual celebration held on June 19 to commemorate the end of chattel slavery in America.

National

Column Explains How Tom Hanks Could Be Anti-Racist — Not Just Non-Racist

6:03pm June 15, 2021

by Eric Deggans

Actor Tom Hanks wrote an essay calling for more widespread teaching of Black American history, leading to NPR's Eric Deggans' response: Tom Hanks Is A Non-Racist. It's Time For Him To Be Anti-Racist.

Tom Hanks recently wrote an essay in The New York Times urging more widespread teaching of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The Oscar winner has built a career on movies about American white men doing the right thing.

Arts

Opinion: Tom Hanks Is A Non-Racist. It's Time For Him To Be Anti-Racist

8:27am June 13, 2021

by Eric Deggans

TV critic Eric Deggans says the Oscar-winning actor whose career has been rooted in films based on U.S. history needs to take responsibility for helping dismantle the notion of white exceptionalism.

This Jan. 26, 1965, file photo shows Mildred Loving and her husband Richard P Loving. Bernard S. Cohen, who successfully challenged a Virginia law banning interracial marriage.

June 12 Is Loving Day — When Interracial Marriage Finally Became Legal In The U.S.

10:33pm June 12, 2021

"Loving Day" celebrates the historic ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which declared unconstitutional a Virginia law prohibiting mixed-race marriage — and legalized interracial marriage in every state.

A police body camera image shows bystanders including Darnella Frazier (third from right filming) as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was recorded pressing his knee on George Floyd's neck in Minneapolis.

National

Darnella Frazier, Who Filmed George Floyd's Murder, Wins An Honorary Pulitzer

4:06pm June 11, 2021

by Joe Hernandez

Committee officials who give out the prestigious prize in journalism and the arts said Frazier's recording highlighted "the crucial role of citizens in journalists' quests for truth and justice."

Handy Kennedy, founder of AgriUnity cooperative, feeds his cows on HK Farms earlier this year in Cobbtown, Ga. The AgriUnity cooperative is a group of Black farmers formed to better their chances of economic success.

U.S. Farmers Of Color Were About To Get Loan Forgiveness. Now The Program Is On Hold

2:17pm June 11, 2021

by Joe Hernandez

A new federal program created by the Biden administration to reverse years of economic discrimination against U.S. farmers of color has ground to a halt.