Lee Hawkins

Lee Hawkins (2018) is News Editor for The Wall Street Journal who writes for and appears on WSJ’s video and broadcasting platforms. He began his career as a business reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Wisconsin State Journal. Lee is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and a four-time winner of NABJ’s “Salute to Excellence” Award.

As a Logan Nonfiction fellow, Lee will continue work on his first book, “Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free.” It is a genealogical investigation of lethal racial violence visited on one family over successive generations, from chattel slavery in 1600s Jamestown, through the 1800s when his ancestors were born into plantation slavery in Alabama, to the present. Lee and his family countered a racist, homicidal culture by embracing education and entrepreneurship to find self-healing and empowerment. Ultimately, “Nobody’s Slave” is the story of one African American family’s triumph over America’s history of racial violence. It will be published by HarperCollins.