MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Finally today, we'd like to leave you with some thoughts from a few of our recent guests. We've been asking people to tell us what to watch or read to help us understand this moment in American life. Here's some of what they told us.
KEISHA BLAIN: I'm Keisha Blain, an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. And I would recommend Khalil Muhammad's "The Condemnation Of Blackness: Race, Crime, And The Making Of Modern Urban America." This book will help readers understand how the idea of Black criminality came to develop in the United States. It will provide a broad overview of not just policing in the U.S. but also how the ideas of race and crime intersects.
WALLACE JEFFERSON: I'm Wallace Jefferson. I'm the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas. I hope that people will take the opportunity to go see "Come From Away." It is a Broadway play about 9/11. And when all the planes were diverted, many of them arrived in the small town of Gander Newfoundland. And it is an inspiring story of how people of very diverse backgrounds and political orientations and gender orientations and races work together as a community to embrace the freedoms that our nation and the world endeavor for. It is inspiring. And it tells me that, in times of great distress, it is not impossible - in fact, people are hungering for the ability to work together toward a greater good.
MARTIN: That was Wallace Jefferson and Keisha Blain. If you missed our conversations with them, you can go back and listen at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.