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 these videos, it's black people calling the cops on white ones who are behaving in a socially irresponsible manner: They're not voting.
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In the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, two Americans won medals for the 200-meter race. And then in a move that still echoes, they raised their fists in the black power salute on the podium.
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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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Historian Imani Perry looks beyond Hansberry's artistic genius to her involvement in several movements — civil rights, LGBTQ rights, anti-colonialism — ahead of the popular curve.
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Arthur Mitchell was the founding director of the Dance Theater of Harlem, the country's first black ballet company. He died Wednesday at the age of 84.
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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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Photographer Bill Cunningham democratized fashion by showing that style wasn't dependent on money or status in his photos for The New York Times. He died in 2016 but had secretly written a memoir.
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Arthur Ashe is the only African-American man to win the U.S. Open. In 1968, tennis was his portal to fame, but he would go on to earn worldwide respect as a social justice activist as well.
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Two friends, one black, one white, produced a short play about Carolyn Bryant, the white woman who accused Emmett Till of whistling at her. Since his murder, racial tensions exist six decades later.
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The best-selling novel about Southeast Asia's super wealthy is now a movie. Jon Chu is the director. The movie's themes of identity, class and family are universal.