Ep 236: Ordinary Heroes with Bernie Furshpan and guest Lee Hawkins on hmTv

Ep 236 — Ordinary Heroes with Lee Hawkins

Journalist and author Lee Hawkins joins host Bernie Furshpan for a candid, no-fluff conversation about intergenerational trauma, resilience, and the power of telling the truth—even when it stings. Hawkins traces his family’s 400-year arc from slavery and Jim Crow to the “integration generation,” connects it with Holocaust memory, and shows how curiosity (not judgment) can heal what history tried to break.

You’ll hear how Hawkins’ reporting—from his Pulitzer-finalist work on the Tulsa Race Massacre to his book I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free—opened a vault of documents, DNA, and hard-won wisdom. He and Bernie draw sharp parallels between Nazi persecution and American segregation, and argue for teaching Holocaust, slavery, and Jim Crow so young people can build empathy and backbone, not just opinions.

In this episode:

• The “integration generation” and what it changed—and didn’t
• How family archives and DNA can rewire a personal narrative
• Parallels between Jim Crow and the Holocaust’s machinery of hate
• Why remembrance is a survival skill, not a history lesson
• Turning inherited pain into purpose, art, and community action
• A preview of Hawkins’ next book, Murder at Mile 39

Listen if: you want a clear-eyed, forward-looking take on overcoming trauma—and a practical blueprint for teaching it with compassion and spine.

Call to action: Share this episode with an educator, a student, or anyone who thinks “it was a long time ago.” It wasn’t—and what we do next is on us.

Transcript

Bernie Furshpan: Welcome. I’m Bernie Furshpan, host of Ordinary Heroes here on hmTv at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center. Today’s guest is no “ordinary” hero—he’s extraordinary: journalist, author, creator, and deep thinker on intergenerational trauma and resilience. We’ll be exploring his story and the parallels with the Holocaust. Mr. Lee Hawkins—Lee, thank you for being here. It’s a distinct honor and a privilege.

Lee Hawkins: Thank you, Bernie. I’m grateful to be here—and excited to see the museum after we’re done. Holocaust education is critical, and I’m glad there’s a place where students and adults can come to learn and be challenged.

Bernie: Let’s start with you. Where did you grow up? What shaped you—education, family, early influences?

Lee: I grew up in Maplewood, Minnesota, a largely Scandinavian, white suburb. Our family roots were also deep in the Black community of nearby St. Paul. In our first house there were very few Black families; by the time we moved again in the early ’70s, more Black families had come to the suburbs—partly because a highway cut through the heart of our community in St. Paul. It’s a familiar story across the U.S.

I think of myself as part of the “integration generation”—the first in my family born with the same constitutional rights as white Americans. My family’s been in this country since the 1600s, but my father grew up under Jim Crow—an apartheid system. He moved to Minnesota at twelve after his mother died; she couldn’t get equal treatment in an Alabama hospital. That experience shaped him, and he, in turn, shaped me—he was protective, afraid for our safety, determined to turn us into kids who were emotionally older than our age.

I went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, became editorial page editor of The Badger Herald, and that launched me into journalism. I worked at papers in Wisconsin, then spent nineteen years at The Wall Street Journal. In 2022, a series I did on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre became a Pulitzer Prize finalist. That momentum fed into my book, I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free—the paperback’s out in January. I’ve been traveling the country speaking about my relationship with my father, and how investigative skills helped me go back 400 years into our family story.

That journey included DNA testing. I learned I’m about 18% European—legacies of colonization, enslavement, sexual violence. Reaching out to my white cousins, we opened a vault of documents and photographs that showed, concretely, how slavery and Jim Crow—ended only about sixty years ago—reached right into my childhood.

Bernie: As a second-generation Holocaust survivor, I feel those parallels deeply. My father was the only survivor in a family of eight. When we bring young people through the museum, we talk about how Hitler plagiarized the mechanics of Jim Crow—segregation, exclusion from spaces, separate water, ghettos, camps—weaponized bureaucracy. Our parents saw the worst of humanity and still taught us to build better lives.

Lee: Yes. My father’s mind was still anchored in Alabama’s rules of white supremacy. He loved us fiercely and demanded perfection—because mistakes could be deadly where he grew up. In the book I share a kindergarten story—I accepted a last-minute birthday party invite without calling home. The consequences at home were severe. I later traced a straight line from the belts used as discipline in Black families to the whips used on plantations. Trauma travels—through culture, through habits, through what parents fear.

He had nightmares. I’d hear my mother soothing him: “Leroy, it’s a dream.” When I asked what he dreamed about, he’d say, “Alabama, son. Alabama.” That’s how close it was.

Bernie: My father, too, woke up crying from nightmares—a lifetime later. Survival has a long echo.

You’ve said it takes multiple generations to metabolize trauma. Whether or not epigenetics fully proves inherited trauma, we can agree the social, political, and environmental pathways are real. When did you realize your upbringing was different from your peers’?

Lee: Immediately. We were patriotic—my father enlisted in the Air Force during the Vietnam era despite not being treated as a full citizen. But rules at home were strict. In our church community and friend circles—many families with roots in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas—the expectations were similar: discipline, excellence, “no slack.” The stereotype of Black people as lazy didn’t match my world; everyone worked—some two or three jobs for thirty years and a pension.

Bernie: We just came back from an event in Congress honoring the Harlem Hellfighters with the Congressional Medal of Honor—long overdue. The injustice is obvious: Black soldiers fought heroically for freedoms they couldn’t fully enjoy at home.

Lee: My relatives served in World War II; some are buried in military cemeteries. They experienced more respect abroad than here—and they hoped their valor would change things back home. Too often, it didn’t. For generations, policy and culture programmed people to see Black citizens as lesser. So when decorated soldiers returned with pride, it challenged a lie—one some people clung to.

Bernie: Let’s bring this to the work of empathy. Why is teaching about the Holocaust, slavery, and—crucially—Jim Crow essential for young people today?

Lee: Because the dual system was real—legal, violent, and murderously enforced. In my own family, someone has been murdered in every generation since 1837. My next book, Murder at Mile 39, traces killings from 1890 to 1990 that explain a lot about why my father was the way he was. Jim Crow wasn’t “just” segregation; it was apartheid and a crime against humanity. Kids won’t understand our communities’ urgency—or our resilience—without that context.

I admire how the Jewish community insists on remembrance—Passover’s “we were slaves” is about moral memory and transmission. In the Black community, many of us still live on the sites of terror. Too often we internalize slavery as shame. But the shame isn’t ours. The miracle is that we survived—and built.

Bernie: Survivors I’ve known weren’t bitter; they were generous, creative, determined to leave the world kinder than they found it. Which brings me to you as an artist—how has this history shaped your creativity?

Lee: I think of it as borrowed power from our ancestors. If your people endured and chose to love anyway, you inherit a mandate to build. Trauma can destroy, but with healing, it can sharpen empathy and purpose. I see no contradiction between altruism and capitalism: we strive to redeem sacrifices by building institutions, passing down wisdom and wealth, closing the gap stolen by history.

And we do it together. Collaboration between Black and Jewish communities has been pivotal: Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington building schools; Jewish attorneys arguing Brown v. Board; Freedom Riders—some Jewish—who died alongside Black activists. When doors closed, we made our own. That’s resented by some—but it’s also the blueprint for progress.

Bernie: Amen to that. Before we close—what do you want a 16-year-old hearing this to take away?

Lee: Be curious about your family. Ask elders for stories. Read the documents; do the DNA test if you can. Don’t lead with judgment—lead with curiosity. And when you encounter hate, use every right you have, because many of us are the first in our families to truly have them. Finally, build something—art, business, community—that makes life measurably better for others. That’s how we honor the people who got us this far.

Bernie: Beautifully said. You’re a generous soul and a powerful voice. I’m grateful for this conversation—and for your book, I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free. I hope everyone listening reads it.

Lee: Thank you, brother. It’s been an honor.

Bernie: My thanks as well to our team—technical director Priscilla Dolan for the fantastic work in the studio—and to Steve Kak for helping make this connection. And to our listeners: thank you for joining us. I’m Bernie Furshpan, your host for Ordinary Heroes on hmTv. Until next time.