What to Know
- Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow" is joining the New York Times as an Opinion pages columnist in September.
- Alexander is also a civil rights lawyer who has written for The Times and other publications in the past.
- She is The Times only black female columnist, according to blavity.com
Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, is joining the New York Times in September as a columnist for the opinion pages.
Alexander is the only African-American woman to hold this position currently, according to blavity.com.
James Bennet, the Times' editorial page editor, said in a statement that Alexander's book, "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."
Alexander is a civil rights lawyer fighting for victims of both race and gender discrimination and has written for The Times in the past as well as other publications.
She has clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court, according to a statement released by The Times.
"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," Bennet added.
