Karen Grigsby Bates
Karen Grigsby Bates is the Senior Correspondent for Code Switch, a podcast that reports on race and ethnicity. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before becoming a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is especially interested in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She oversees much of Code Switch's coverage of books by and about people of color, as well as issues of race in the publishing industry. Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels; she is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She lives in Los Angeles and reports from NPR West.
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In her new memoir, Straight tells the story of the women in her family—her Swiss-German blood relatives and her African American, Indigenous and Creole in-laws who crossed the U.S. to settle in Calif.
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Diahann Carroll died Friday at 84. Carroll was a Broadway, night club, and Hollywood singer and actress when NBC asked her to star in the sitcom Julia, as the first non-stereotyped Black character.
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Recorded after a traumatic period in the singer's life, Gloria Gaynor's disco hit quickly found its true audience: LGBT communities, survivors of domestic violence and others pushed aside by society.
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Morrison was the author of Beloved, Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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Looks like this year, April showers brought April flowers. As in, a bouquet of outstanding poets. So stop and smell the roses, my friends.
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Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos won gold and bronze at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Their raised-fist salute outraged many viewers — and still resonates today.
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A new biography of the African-American playwright shows that she was so much more than her most famous work: A Raisin in the Sun.
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"The best fashion show is definitely on the street — always has been and always will be." Bill Cunningham
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A new television series explores the 2012 killing of the 17-year-old in Sanford, Fla., and the subsequent trial that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.
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A series from the Paramount Network shows how the shooting death of Trayvon Martin six years ago gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, and an examination of Florida's "stand your ground law."