Race

Iowans filled a room at the Capitol Thursday morning to oppose a bill that would end a requirement for police to have yearly de-escalation and bias prevention training and remove references to affirmative action in state law.

After ICE federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota, the divide between states on either side of the immigration enforcement debate is growing wider.

A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office calculates the cost of efforts to fire civil rights staff and questions the department's ability to enforce federal civil rights laws.

A long-running fight over how to calculate and repay state funding debts to public HBCUs is flaring across the South, and Emily Siner and Camellia Burris tell the story in their podcast 'The Debt' from Nashville Public Radio and The Tennessee Lookout.

Black Future Fest is a month-long celebration focusing on Afrofuturistic art, fashion and community imagination in Iowa City. On this episode, Black Future Fest organizer Latasha DeLoach and professor of journalism and African American Studies Venise Berry join to discuss Afrofuturism and the upcoming events. Later, reflecting on the legacy of Lee Swearengin, who spent decades of his life institutionalized, but made tremendous contributions to Iowa archeology.

This Iowan was the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College. She lived to be a supercentenarian, dying in 2026.

Civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin has died. She was 86. Her 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus helped spark the modern civil rights movement.

'James' is a retelling of Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' but this time the story is told by Huck’s companion, Jim or James. James is an enslaved man who flees when he learns that he is at risk of being sold. Expert readers Rachelle Chase, Faye Dant and Jocelyn Chadwick discuss their reading experiences for this episode of the 'Talk of Iowa' book club. Please be advised: a portion of this show references racist language used in the book. (This episode was originally produced on Feb. 11, 2025.)

Kendal Wright, editor in chief of the University of Alabama's Nineteen Fifty-Six magazine, reacts to the suspension of two student publications amid a federal crackdown on campus DEI policies.

A new book examines the racist background of the last public hanging in the U.S. when tens of thousands of people came to watch in a small Kentucky town.