Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates (born September 30, 1975) is an American author, journalist, and activist.

He gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.

Coates has worked for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time.

He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, O, and other publications.

He has published three non-fiction books: The Beautiful Struggle, Between the World and Me, and We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.

From 2000 to 2007, Coates worked as a journalist with various publications, including Philadelphia Weekly, The Village Voice, and Time.

His first article for The Atlantic, "This Is How We Lost to the White Man", about Bill Cosby and conservatism, started a new, more successful and stable phase of his career.

The article led to an appointment with a regular column for The Atlantic, a blog that was popular, influential, and had a high level of community engagement.

Coates became a senior editor at The Atlantic, for which he wrote feature articles as well as maintaining his blog.

Topics covered by the blog included politics, history, race, culture as well as sports, and music.

His writings on race, such as his September 2012 The Atlantic cover piece "Fear of a Black President" and his June 2014 feature "The Case for Reparations", have been especially praised, and won his blog a place on the Best Blogs of 2011 list by Time magazine and the 2012 Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism from The Sidney Hillman Foundation.

His blog has been praised for its engaging comments section, which Coates curates and moderates heavily so that "the jerks are invited to leave [and] the grown-ups to stay and chime in."

In discussing The Atlantic article on "The Case for Reparations", Coates said he had worked on it for almost two years.

He had read Rutgers University professor Beryl Satter's book, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, a history of redlining that included a discussion of the grassroots organization the Contract Buyers League, of which Clyde Ross was one of the leaders.

The focus of the article was not so much on reparations for slavery, but was instead a focus on the institutional racism of housing discrimination.

Coates has worked as a guest columnist for The New York Times, having turned down an offer from them to become a regular columnist.

He has written for The Washington Post, the Washington Monthly, and O magazine.

In mid-2014, Coates attended an intensive program in French at Middlebury College to prepare for a writing fellowship in Paris, France.

Coates's first journalism job was as a reporter at The Washington City Paper; his editor was David Carr.

Between the World and Me won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

He has also written a Black Panther series and a Captain America series for Marvel Comics.

In 2015 he received a Genius Grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

Coates was born in Baltimore, Maryland.

His father, William Paul Coates (known by his middle name), was a Vietnam War veteran, former Black Panther, publisher, and librarian.

His mother, Cheryl Lynn Coates (née Waters), was a teacher.

Coates's father founded and ran Black Classic Press, a publishing company specializing in African-American titles.

The Press grew out of a grassroots organization, the George Jackson Prison Movement (GJPM), which initially operated a Black bookstore called the Black Book.

Later, Black Classic Press was established with a table-top printing press in the basement of the Coates family home.

Coates's father had seven children, five boys and two girls, by four women.

Coates's father's first wife had three children, Coates's mother had two boys, and the other two women each had a child.

The children were raised together in a close-knit family; most lived with their mothers and at times lived with their father.

Coates has said that he lived with his father for the entirety of his upbringing, and that, in his family, the important overarching focus was on rearing children with values based on family, respect for elders and being a contribution to your community, an approach to family that was common in the community where he grew up.

Coates grew up in the Mondawmin neighborhood of Baltimore during the crack epidemic.

Coates's interest in literature was instilled at an early age when his mother, in response to bad behavior, would require him to write essays.

His father's work with the Black Classic Press was a huge influence.

Coates has said that he read many of the books his father published.

Coates attended a number of Baltimore-area schools, including William H. Lemmel Middle School and the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, before graduating from Woodlawn High School.

He attended Howard University, leaving after five years to start a career in journalism.

He is the only child in his family without a college degree.

His first novel, The Water Dancer, was published in 2019.