Norris, an acclaimed journalist, author, and commentator, took to the stage at Pickard Theater on January 25, 2025, to deliver the College’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture.
“We often think of Dr. King not as a man but as a monument, as someone on a postage stamp,” said Norris. But, she added, the fact that King came to speak and meet with students on campus at the invitation of the students themselves says a lot about him as a man, as someone who valued human interaction.
One of things Norris said she’s learned about King is his eagerness to step “outside the security cordon” and engage with individuals. “He was always asking them ‘Could you be that one person? … understanding that in order to move the country forward, the movement was important but so was the individual. That that's how change happens,” she stressed, “person by person.”
Norris, who in 2002 became the first Black female National Public Radio host when she joined the station’s flagship news program All Things Considered, said she has always felt a strong connection to King, like “part of his unofficial family.” Born in the early 1960s and spending her early years in both Minnesota and Birmingham, Alabama, Norris said she “grew up in a world made possible by him.” Furthermore, King’s tendency to look for the humanity in others, said Norris, very much informs the current work she does around race and identity with .
After a distinguished career in journalism, Norris left NPR in 2015 to focus on the project, which she launched in 2010. The initiative, she said, was born in the midst of a nationwide tour to promote her , a memoir about her family’s “very complex racial legacy.” To invite as many people as she could into the conversation, she urged them to fill in postcards with the prompt: “Race. Your thoughts. Six words. Please send.” She initially printed about 200 of these postcards, distributing them at various events, and got about a third of them back.
The project has grown into a huge archive of more than 750,000 cards—most of them now submitted digitally—from participants throughout the US and world, representing an important record of people’s honest views about race. Such is the volume of data collected that Norris’s home now has its own server. “This archive will be useful to people years from now,” she predicted. The project has also led to a book, Our Hidden Conversations: , published last year by Simon and Schuster.
The cards that people submit to the project typically include a picture and a backstory to explain the context of the six-word message. “The submissions are thoughtful, funny, heartbreaking, brave, teeming with anger, and shimmering with hope,” writes Norris on the project’s website. “Some will with make you smile. Others might make you squirm."
Here's a sample of those messages Norris shared with the audience at Pickard Theater:
No word for what I am —from someone of Asian and Latino parentage.
Not all Mexicans like spicy food—from an 8th grade student of Mexican heritage.
Lady, I don’t want your purse—from a Black male.
Most of the submissions to the Race Card Project, however, are from white people, said Norris. These include:
My white guilt is all gone.
Dad was racist. I fought him.
Did my Southern grandpa attend lynchings?
After the lecture, Norris was joined in conversation by Roux Distinguished Scholar Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist, policy expert, and social justice campaigner, before taking further questions from the audience.
At the conclusion of the event, Norris was asked what her six-word message would be for the Race Card Project. Echoed sentiments expressed by the slain civil rights leader himself, she replied: “Still more work to be done."
