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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Stories about Black history often focus on struggle and suffering—but Beverly Jenkins, the author of more than 40 historical romance novels, has spent her career telling stories about Black love. -
Before 2020, the Karen was known by other names. NPR's Code Switch looks at the evolution of the entitled white woman, how her name has changed, but her behavior – and its consequences – not so much.
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Longtime Vogue editor André Leon Talley has a new memoir out called: The Chiffon Trenches. In it, he describes rifts with Vogue editor Anna Wintour and the late designer Karl Lagerfeld.
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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. -
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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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. -
100 years ago this week, some of the bloodiest race riots this country has ever experienced erupted in more than two dozen cities, including Chicago. It was known as the Red Summer. -
For more than a century the Chicago Defender has chronicled Black life in America. After Wednesday it will cease its print editions.
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A family vacation was like planning a military campaign. In the Jim Crow era, this guide book was essential for traveling safely. -
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.
