News

This is the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the South—and the brutality used to enforce it.

Reporter Renee Ferguson coolly and convincingly uncovers racial discrimination by immigration agents at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Black women were disproportionately targeted for strip-searches by customs agents, who suspected them of carrying drugs. Customs guidelines were surprisingly vague and contradictory, yet immigration agents inspected black women twice as often as white women and subjected them…

For its disclosure of the links between the region’s rampant crime rate and corruption in the local criminal justice system. The reporting, largely the work of Melvin Claxton, initiated political reforms.