Courtesy of Morehouse School of Medicine
Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) today released the May edition of its 2024 “Danforth Dialogues” podcast, with a conversation between MSM’s President and CEO Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice and Joy-Ann Reid, renowned broadcast journalist and author, and the first Black female host of a prime-time cable news show, MSNBC’s The ReidOut.
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Denver, Reid graduated from Harvard University with a degree in film studies. Her broadcast career began at a television station in Florida before becoming a morning radio talk show host. She served as the managing editor of the Griot, worked in former President Barack Obama’s campaign and has authored three books.
“With her extensive history of taking center stage as a television reporter, morning show host, and the first Black woman to host a prime-time cable news show, not to mention writing three books, her dedication to her field is clear,” said Dr. Montgomery Rice. “We are not only excited to have her on Danforth Dialogues but she is also our 2024 Morehouse School of Medicine Health Equity Excellence in Social Justice award recipient given at our annual Gloster Society event.”
Reid lost her mother to breast cancer when she was just 17 years old. “It was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me,” Reid said. “So, for me, women’s health is a very personal issue, because I believe that had my mother not been a Black woman, she would have had a better chance of survival.”
Her mother’s death inspired her to be an advocate for women’s health. “And you know that we, as Black women, are dying of diseases that other women are being cured of, that we’re also dying disproportionately in trying to give birth, and so when you ban abortion or you make abortion inaccessible, we are disproportionately going to die,” she said.
Reid credited legendary Black journalist Gwen Ifill as a major inspiration in her journey. “I grew up watching the news and being a news junkie,” Reid said. “My mother was a news junkie. We watched the Sunday shows like Meet the Press, (but) there were just no black women and so when I finally saw Gwen Ifill, she was like a miracle to me.”
She is the author of three books, “Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide” in 2016; “The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story” in 2019 and her latest book published earlier this year, “Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and The Love Story That Awakened America.”
Reid said she was inspired to write her book on the Evers because “we as a (Black) people are exposed to our pain, but we rarely read about our love stories” pointing out that while civil rights heroes like Medgar Evers or Dr. Martin Luther King were extraordinary individuals, she wanted to show them as “people who fall in love and have a regular life … because it tells us that as regular people we can do extraordinary things.”
Launched in 2022, “Danforth Dialogues” focuses on the leadership lessons from the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic and their broader implication for society. Named after the historic Danforth Chapel on the Morehouse College campus, the podcast series features a cross-section of guests and topics.