“Brady’s team, though, had been haunted by a serial rapist they could not identify, much less arrest. His DNA had been found in a half-dozen old cases in which evidence remained at the hospital.” The final installment in a three-part “Cold Justice” series.
Baltimore
Posted inCrime, Current Events, Highlight, Quotes
An American City, Inhabited Yet Abandoned
“Not a single person was killed on the day of the rioting. But the following month, May, would conclude with 41 homicides — the most the city had experienced in a month since the 1970s.”
Posted inCrime, Current Events, Nonfiction, Quotes
How Baltimore Police Abused Their Power
Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force were celebrated for getting firearms off the street, until detectives discovered they were also robbing criminals of guns, drugs and money.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Building a World of Acceptance: A Conversation with DeRay Mckesson
Activist DeRay Mckesson says that to make this world a better place, people need to pick one thing to work on and keep at it.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Lives of Nuns, Part 2: A Reading List
In the two years since I compiled the first installation of “The Lives of Nuns,” Autostraddle wrote about queer nuns in history, Racked shadowed (fake) nuns growing marijuana, and The Huffington Post reported on a nun’s murder and the students who want the truth. Those stories and more are included below. Seclude yourself and read.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Looter to Who? James Baldwin on Racism in America
In 1968, essayist, novelist and activist James Baldwin spoke with Esquire about racism in America, Dr. Martin Luther King, poverty and police brutality. In our current era of high profile police violence in communities like Ferguson, Missouri, and protests in Baltimore, Maryland, Baldwin’s words sound as prescient and, unfortunately, fresh as they did forty-seven years […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘A Century of Public Policy Designed to Segregate and Impoverish its Black Population’
As I described in the Making of Ferguson, the federal government maintained a policy of segregation in public housing nationwide for decades. This was as true in northeastern cities like New York as it was in border cities like Baltimore and St. Louis. In 1994, civil rights groups sued the Department of Housing and Urban […]
Posted inQuotes
Nonviolence: The Right Answer to the Wrong Question
Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain.
Posted inCollege, Nonfiction
How to Do Oral History the Right Way: Remembering the Baltimore Stallions, Our College Pick
Journalism, like everything else, has its trends. From celebrity guest editors to abundant Upworthian headlines, there’s a lot of replication in our business. So it was with low expectations that I began to read “Baltimore’s Forgotten Champions,” an oral history of a Canadian Football League team by a group of University of Maryland students. Most […]
Posted inCollege, Nonfiction
How to Do Oral History the Right Way: Remembering the Baltimore Stallions, Our College Pick
Journalism, like everything else, has its trends. From celebrity guest editors to abundant Upworthian headlines, there’s a lot of replication in our business. So it was with low expectations that I began to read “Baltimore’s Forgotten Champions,” an oral history of a Canadian Football League team by a group of University of Maryland students. Most […]