The 21st Show

Best of: Journalist Lee Hawkins finds freedom in exploring traumatic family history

Produced by Jose Zepeda and Brian Mackey
 
a montage with the book cover (black with orange lettering) and a portrait of Lee Hawkins: he's got a shaved head; large, thick-rimmed glasses; and he's wearing a tweed sport coat with an elaborate Dolce & Gabbana crest embroidered on the breast pocket; the jacket is worn over a red polo shirt, which in turn is worn over a pink button-down shirt

Lee Hawkins at the Urbana studios of Illinois Public Media in May 2025. Portrait: Jose Zepeda/IPM - Book cover: HarperCollins Publishers

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Lee Hawkins is a journalist, a podcast producer, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. But in his new book, he turns his skills toward telling his own family’s story. It’s a memoir across 400 years of enslavement, Jim Crow, and beyond — and how the trauma of those experiences is passed from one generation to the next. The book is called, “I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free.”

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Lee Hawkins
Author, "I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free"
Podcast creator, "What Happened in Alabama?"

A version of this interview originally aired May 21, 2025.