Norris was born in Hennepin County, Minnesota, to Elizabeth Jean "Betty" and Belvin Norris Jr. Her mother is a fourth-generation Minnesotan and her father is from Alabama.[6] Belvin served in the Navy in World War II.[7] Norris attended Washburn High School in Minneapolis, and later the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she first studied electrical engineering, before transferring to the University of Minnesota where she majored in journalism and mass communications.[4]
Career
At the University of Minnesota, Norris wrote for the Minnesota Daily and then became a reporter for WCCO-TV.[4]
Norris wrote for The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. In 1990, while at The Washington Post, Norris received the Livingston Award for articles she wrote about the life of a six-year-old boy who lived with a crack-addicted mother in a crack house.[8]
Norris joined the NPR evening news program All Things Considered on December 9, 2002, becoming the first African-American female host for NPR.[4] In 2015, Fortune described Norris as "one of [NPR's] biggest stars".[9]
Norris announced on October 24, 2011, that she would temporarily step down from her All Things Considered hosting duties and refrain from involvement in any NPR political coverage during the 2012 election year because of her husband's appointment to the Barack Obama 2012 presidential reelection campaign.[17] On January 3, 2013, NPR announced that Norris had stepped down as a regular host of All Things Considered and would instead serve as an occasional host and special correspondent.[18]
The Race Card Project
The Race Card Project, begun by Norris in 2010 while she was at NPR, invited people to submit comments on their experience of race in the United States in six words.[19] Norris and collaborators won a 2014 Peabody Award for the project.[20]
In December 2015, Norris left NPR to focus on the Race Card Project.[21] In July 2020, Simon & Schuster announced a book deal for the project, which would include a related children's book.[22] That book--Our Hidden Conversation What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity--was released in January 2024, and is based on Norris's collection of hundreds of thousands of hidden conversations for The Race Card Project archive.[23]
Norris, with Chuck Holmes, Melissa Bear, Adrian Kinloch, and Walter Ray Watson, accepts the Peabody Award for "The Race Card Project".
The Grace of Silence
Norris is also the author of The Grace of Silence,[24] a memoir and reported non-fiction book that started as an extension of the Race Card Project.[25] In the book Norris writes of discovering her father's shooting by a Birmingham police officer and also her maternal grandmother's job as an itinerant Aunt Jemima.[26]
Awards
2006 Emmy Award for ABC News coverage of the September 11 attacks[4]
2006 Peabody Award for ABC News coverage of the September 11 attacks[4]
^Hepola, Sarah (2007). "Heart of Glass: My sexual fantasies about NPR". Nerve. p. 2. Take Michele Norris, co-host of All Things Considered... there was the contrarian pronunciation of her first name, MEE-shell, which was staunchly enforced by every guest, all of whom must have been given a 10-minute primer prior to air.
^"Who We Are". Grady College and University of Georgia. Retrieved November 22, 2019.
^Norris, Michele L. (December 9, 2022). "Where do you really come from? That's a toxic question". Washington Post. Retrieved December 24, 2022. My mother is a fourth-generation Black woman from Minnesota, and my father was a Black man born and raised in Alabama.
