Nikole Hannah-Jones, staff writer for The New York Times, will speak at this year’s Kalamazoo Community Foundation (KZCF) Community Meeting 6:00pm at Miller Auditorium on Tuesday, October 30.

Her talk on "Race and Education in America" – sponsored by PNC Bank – will also be a part of the University Center for the Humanities 2018-2019 speaker series at Western Michigan University. The event is free and open to the public; registration information will be announced at a future date.

"Every child deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential and we work with a variety of nonprofits to expand access, affordability, and quality of early care and education," says KZCF President/CEO Carrie Pickett-Erway. "Nikole Hannah-Jones' work in illustrating the systemic barriers that prevent children of color from accessing high-quality education in a segregated city is an important message in reshaping the conversations our community has around education reform."

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Hannah-Jones specializes in racial injustice reporting, including civil rights, fair housing, school segregation and discrimination. According to Hannah-Jones, "There isn’t a beat you can cover in America where race is not a factor. Education and housing are the two most intimate areas of American life, and they’re the areas where we’ve made the least progress."

She is writing a book on school segregation, "The Problem We All Live With," scheduled for release in 2019. She is also the author of two e-books, "Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Case" (2013) and "Ghost of Greenwood: Dispatches from Freedom Summer" (2014).

Hannah-Jones is a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient for reshaping the national conversation around education reform and for reporting on racial re-segregation in schools. She was the recipient of three other national awards in 2017, including the National Magazine Award, for her story on choosing a school for her daughter in a segregated city. She is also a 2017 New America Emerson Fellow and a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Journalist. In 2016, she helped found the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a training and mentorship organization working to increase the number of investigative reporters of color.

Read more about her work at nikolehannahjones.com.

Register for the event today at https://kzcf.eventbrite.com