From New York magazine:
With protests still raging over recent police shootings of unarmed black men and boys, and over the legal system’s seeming paralysis in the face of police-prosecutor solidarity, the nation’s first African-American attorney general began a farewell tour that was also a last-gasp effort to start making things right. Last week the tour brought Eric Holder, who announced his decision to step down in September, to Memphis to host the second in a series of community dialogues he hoped would address, and perhaps even begin to assuage, the anger being directed at police in cities around the country.
On the first stop, in Atlanta, Holder spoke at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was ordained and preached. In Memphis, he stood on the balcony where King died, at the National Civil Rights Museum, a modern facility grafted onto the remains of the Lorraine Motel, where the contents of rooms 306 and 307, used by King and his lieutenants in those final hours before the horror, are preserved behind Plexiglas walls.
At the museum, Holder held a closed-door roundtable with pastors and police, students and community leaders. Then we boarded a replica of the bus Rosa Parks rode into history, to talk about the things the attorney general has said and done and the things he feels the country has yet to do. Read Joy Reid’s full interview with Attorney General Eric Holder on the New York magazine web site.
Joy-Ann Reid
Joy-Ann Reid is host of “The ReidOut” at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC. “The ReidOut” features one-on-one conversations with politicians and newsmakers while addressing provocative political issues both inside and outside of the beltway. Recommended
