Lee Hawkins

Academic Year 2026-2027
Hutchins Family Foundation Fellow
Lee Hawkins dressed in sitting backwards on a chair and looking at the photographer with glasses in hand

Lee Hawkins is a journalist, 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and author of I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free . He is also the creator and host of What Happened in Alabama and Unlocking the Gates: How the North Led Housing Discrimination in America, both audio series he co-produced with American Public Media and APM's Marketplace. 

Learning Under Threat: Corporal Punishment and Black Children in the Classroom

Lee Hawkins’s fellowship project, Learning Under Threat: Corporal Punishment and Black Children in the Classroom, will examine the impact of corporal punishment on Black children’s learning, safety, dignity, health, well-being, and trust in public institutions. Drawing on history, data, interviews, and narrative journalism, the work will connect past and present to better understand what it means for Black children to learn under the threat of being paddled with wooden boards in American classrooms.