The New York Times is about to take on its only female black columnist and it is Michelle Alexander, the critically-acclaimed author.
James Bennet, the New York Times’ editorial page editor, made the announcement on Thursday via a press release. He said the author of the critically acclaimed book “The New Jim Crow” will join the publication as a columnist for its Opinion pages.

According to the press release: “Michelle is the author of ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,’ the book that changed the way many of us think about criminal justice and about the persistence and adaptation of forms of racial control in the United States. She is a powerful writer, a fierce advocate for a more just world and a deep believer in open-minded, searching debate over how to achieve it.”
Alexander is also a civil rights lawyer, advocate and legal scholar. She served as director of the Racial Justice Project for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California where she coordinated media advocacy, grassroots organizing and litigation for the project.
In 2005, Alexander won a fellowship that led her to write “The New Jim Crow,” which traces the history of mass incarceration of Black Americans from slavery to today’s prison system.
Using her knowledge, Alexander has highlighted racial bias and profiling in the American criminal justice system. This has given people of colour knowledge of the laws that affect their daily lives.
Alexander would be resume writing as a columnist for the NYT in September and we cannot wait to see what issues she is going to touch on and her thought-provoking views on them.