Events like the deaths of Freddie Gray and Eric Garner in police custody have sharpened the country discussion’s of violence and race. A month ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer whose blog at the Atlantic.com is destination reading for many, released his memoir: Between The World And Me. Written as a letter to his son, it expresses Coates’ experience of being black in America. Six years ago, I spoke with Ta-Nehisi about his first memoir, his understanding of race as he was growing up in Baltimore and how he was taught by his father, Paul Coates.
Among his accomplishments Paul Coates can list service in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, work as a university librarian, activism as a Black Panther, founding and running an Afro-centric publishing house, Black Classic Press in Baltimore and raising seven kids against great odds.
Ta-Nehisi Coates published The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood in 2009, and he and his father joined me in the studio to talk about that unlikely road. I asked Ta-Nehisi what made his family unique.
