Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, will be joining The New York Times team as a columnist for the Opinion pages according to a Thursday, June 21, announcement from the publication. 

Alexander’s book gained popularity for its focus on how the War on Drugs became a tool for the criminal justice system to incarcerate black males and other disadvantaged minorities at disproportional rates. Issues of mass incarceration, the book argues, should be at the center of conversations surrounding race, civil rights and justice. 

The novel won the NAACP’s Image Award for Outstanding Non-fiction in 2011 and was a New York Times bestseller. 

“Michelle is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, the book that changed the way many of us think about criminal justice and about the persistence and adaptation of forms of racial control in the United States. She is a powerful writer, a fierce advocate for a more just world and a deep believer in open-minded, searching debate over how to achieve it,” James Bennet, New York Times editorial page editor, said in a written statement. 

After leading a career dedicated to service – traversing through life as a civil rights lawyer, a clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun on the Supreme Court and director of the Racial Justice Project for Northern California’s American Civil Liberties Union – Alexander has been openly welcomed to the Times by its progressive audience. It's unclear if Alexander is the first woman of color to be brought on by the publication as a columnist, but she is the only woman of color to serve in the position.

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