Alex Kellogg
Alex Kellogg is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk who covers diversity-related issues and how these act as social, political and economic forces shaping our country. One focus for Kellogg in this newly created position is on the convergence of ethnicity, race, politics, media and government.
Kellogg came to NPR in late 2010 from The Wall Street Journal. Based in Detroit, he covered Michigan and the auto industry for The Journal. He was part of a team of reporters who won a 2010 New York Press Club award for "Detroit in Decline," a 2009 series focusing on the collapse of the U.S. auto industry into the government's arms. His 2010 work as a general assignment reporter on the decline of the city of Detroit was praised by the Columbia Journalism Review and in 2011 he earned first place feature writing awards from the New York Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists.
Kellogg began his career in journalism during a study abroad in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, where he landed an internship and later a job as a producer at Reuters. This experience allowed him to travel extensively in East Africa and the Horn as a working journalist long before he finished college.
As a staff reporter or freelance writer Kellogg's work has appeared in print publications such as The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Boston Globe,the Chicago Tribune,The Chronicle of Higher Education,the Detroit Free Press, The Washington Post, and The Crisisand websites such as BET.com, CNN.com, dailykos.com, the Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, the National Review Online and Yahoo News.
A graduate of Harvard College, Kellogg covered stories across both the United States and Africa before finally receiving his bachelor's degree in 2004. He is the founder of The Deshaun Hill and Harvard Stephens Memorial Scholarship, which is awarded to two African-American undergraduates at Harvard each year.
In addition to his passion for reporting and writing, Kellogg is an avid music collector and a basketball junky. In 2007, a travel essay he wrote was published by the Sierra Club in "A Leaky Tent is a Piece of Paradise," an anthology of young writers.
-
Blacks and whites in America both widely approve of interracial marriage, according to a recent Gallup Poll. And in practice, all racial and ethnic groups are marrying each other more than ever. Still, it hasn't been that long since most Americans strongly opposed such marriages. -
Frank Kameny, a pioneer in the gay rights movement, died Tuesday at 86. In 1957, Kameny was fired from his job as an astronomer for the U.S. government because he was homosexual. He fought his dismissal in court for years and in the 1960s, began picketing outside the White House, calling for equal rights for gays and lesbians. In 2009, the government issued him a formal apology for his firing.
-
The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma is risking millions in federal funding after its decision to expel about 2,800 African-American members. Known as Freedmen, these members are descendants of slaves owned by Cherokees, and some wonder if the move is racist.
-
Even though the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C., has been postponed, King's fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha held its own special ceremonies Friday. The organization spent decades on the effort, partly because King was an Alpha himself.
-
in Washington, D.C., the National Cathedral is closed after it was damaged by Tuesday's 5.8 earthquake. Three capstones broke off its tower. The damage was a bit of a blow to those who came to see the cathedral.
-
Blacks are losing their homes at a fast pace, pushing the wealth gap between whites and blacks to its widest margin in decades. Prince George's County, Md., embodies the trend, with a large black middle class — and nearly 40 percent of the state's foreclosures.
-
The new Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., opens to the public on Monday. A group of teens who will attend talk to NPR's Alex Kellogg about what the monument means to them.
-
Secure Communities was created to help federal authorities deport illegal immigrants who are hardened criminals. But some say immigrants are being deported on minor charges. Illinois, New York, Massachusetts and Los Angeles want to opt out. -
Eliska and Welmon Barriere are among the roughly 6 million blacks who migrated north during the 20th century. They left New Orleans in 1962 for Milwaukee, where they raised a family. But they moved to Georgia in the 1990s, part of a trend of blacks going back to the South. -
Search crews in Alabama continue to pick through huge piles of rubble after last week's tornadoes destroyed entire neighborhoods. In Huntsville, it's taken businesses some time to get up and running again.
