Being Black in America Almost Killed Me Part 2

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The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

More To The Story: When Trymaine Lee began writing his first book, he didn’t realize that the gun violence he was reporting on was such a central part of his own story. But then he began digging into his family history, only to fully learn about a series of racially motivated murders involving his ancestors. Lee’s book, A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America, soon became more personal than he’d planned. On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Lee sits down with host Al Letson for part 2 of a conversation about generational trauma, the challenges of being a Black journalist in America, and how learning about his family’s history has changed how he writes and reports on Black Americans killed by violence.

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Listen: Mississippi Goddam (Reveal)

Listen: Being Black in America Almost Killed Me Part 1 (More To The Story)

Read: Trump Prepares to Wipe Out Years of Progress on Gun Violence (Mother Jones)

Read: A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America (St. Martin’s Press)

Watch: Hope in High Water: A People’s Recovery Twenty Years After Hurricane Katrina (Peacock)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on More to the Story, part two of my conversation with journalist Tremaine Lee.
0:06.3	We talk about the burdens we bear as black journalists reporting on violence involving
0:10.7	black people.
0:11.8	There's nothing like arriving at a crime scene, right, and seeing someone that looks just like
0:18.1	you, dressed just like you, got some Air Force ones fresh just
0:23.4	like you, and the family.
0:26.3	And that look in a mother's eyes, that could be your mother, there's zero things in this
0:32.9	universe like that pain.
0:35.9	More with Tremaine Lee after this.
0:43.4	What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?
0:51.1	ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.
0:53.8	It effectively turned day into night.
0:56.5	And how it shaped the world now.
1:02.5	Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This is more to the story. I'm Al Letson, and this is part two of my conversation with journalist
1:17.5	Tremaine Lee. His new book is called A Thousand Ways to Die, The True Cost of Violence on Black
1:23.5	Life in America. If you're just joining us, go back and check out last week's episode.
1:28.3	But a quick recap, shortly after completing a draft of the book, Tremaine suffered a life-threatening
1:34.1	heart attack. It forced him to look at death in a completely new way. And that connected a lot of
1:40.0	dots for him, from years of reporting on black violence to the generational trauma in his own
1:45.8	family. He came to see that he was carrying around a massive weight, one that nearly killed him.
1:52.2	And before we start, a reminder that we're talking about violence in this episode, and it may not be
1:56.7	appropriate for all listeners.
	...

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