Lee Hawkins is the author of “I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free,” a memoir published in 2025 that traces his Black American family’s history through slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the intergenerational trauma that followed. Hawkins is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he served for 19 years as a reporter, on-camera host, and editor. He has investigated topics ranging from systemic inequality and educational disparities to the intergenerational effects of land theft, racial covenants, and historically motivated homicides. His co-authored feature “The Dreams of Jack and Daisy Scott” was part of The Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize-finalist package on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. His 2024 podcast series, “What Happened in Alabama?,” which he created, produced, wrote, and hosted for American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio, was named one of the “Best Podcasts of the Year” by The Guardian and Amazon/Audible. Hawkins is currently a 2023–2024 Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism and the 2024 Josephine Albright Fellow of the Alicia Patterson Foundation. He also received the 2024 McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism and was the 2022–2023 O’Brien Fellow for Public Service Journalism at Marquette University. In 2023, he received his fifth “Salute to Excellence” Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, for his investigation into how the Jesuits of Maryland used wealth from slavery to fund Georgetown University and other Catholic institutions. He was also a 2021 finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. Raised in Maplewood, Minnesota and the historic Rondo community of St. Paul, Hawkins holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he served as editorial page editor of The Badger Herald.

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