Interview: Andrea Williams, Author of "Baseball's Leading Lady: Effa Manley and the Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues"

In this episode, Amira Rose Davis chats with Andrea Williams about her new book "Baseball's Leading Lady: Effa Manley and the Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues." They discuss Effa's powerful role as co-owner of the Newark Eagles, her foresight of the costs of desegregating baseball, her importance in contemporary conversations about Black institutions and why Andrea wrote this story for young adults.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Amira: As baseball season is starting, there's many conversations on my mind and in the air. Revisiting the conversations about the Negro Leagues now being considered a major, thinking about women getting into ownership, thinking about a renewed energy towards HBCUs. There is a lot of things I wanted to parse through, and it brought to mind again and again Effa Manley. Effa Manley, Newark Eagles owner in the Negro Leagues, a woman who navigated ownership in a Black male sporting world who was an absolute warrior for Black institutions and Black institution-building, and she just kept coming to mind with a lot of these contemporary conversations.

Luckily for me, my friend, Andrea Williams, just dropped a new book again about Effa’s life: Baseball's Leading Lady: The Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues. And so I thought it was only fitting to call her up to talk about the book and what Effa's story can tell us about some of the conversations we're grappling with today. So, welcome to Burn It All Down.

Andrea: I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Amira: Absolutely, Now, y'all, can't see, but I see you have Negro Leagues jersey on, and it's so funny because the only thing that I own is actually an Eagles jersey just to support Effa. I don't actually like much things about New Jersey, [laughter] but that is my one kind of Negro Leagues rep, besides my bobble heads of Tony and Mamie.

Andrea: Okay!

Amira: So, Effa has long been a figure close to my heart. I'm talking about Effa Manley. For those who don't know about Effa Manley, can you tell us a little bit about who Effa was and what led you to this project? Because she is fascinating and people get fascinated from her for multiple reasons. I really want to know what brought you to her story? What brought you to her project?

Andrea: Yeah, I was going to say, I have not perfected the Effa Manley elevator pitch by any means whatsoever. So people are like, “Tell me a little bit!” and I'm like, all right. You got 30 minutes? 45? But yeah, for me, it was really her work as the business manager and co-owner of the Newark Eagles. I went to undergrad to study sport management, thought that I was going to come out and work for a baseball team, a Major League Baseball team, and eventually work my way up and become a general manager. And I graduated from college in 2004 and was just, you know, kind of in that period of like, all right, who's path am I following? Who has done this thing before me? 

And I ended up taking a job at the Negro Leagues baseball museum right out of undergrad. I'm originally from Kansas City, so I went back home after graduating from Georgia Southern and first day, Bob Kendrick – who's a president now and was the marketing director then, so, my direct boss – gave me a tour of the museum and we pass this picture of Effa and her husband Abe kind of just like on the wall, just out of nowhere. I'm like, who are these people?!

Amira: Just chilling.

Andrea: Yeah! Like, who are these people?! And you mentioned like Tony and Mamie, but the museum is set up chronologically and when we get to Effa and Abe, which is like 30s and 40s – there are no women up to that point, right? And so in me, I grew up loving baseball, like, I guess I'm kind of… I hate to say this a little bit, but you get used to not seeing a lot of women, right? So when you do you know how significant it is. So I'm like, yo, who is this woman? Who are these people? And yeah, so he told me a little bit about her and I started doing my own research and just, you know, she was all of the things, you know, at this time, like crazy enough, like Kim Ng had already been in the league for so long, but was still just an assistant with the Yankees.

But here was a woman who had reached the pinnacle, who was running this team like all on her own, like her husband, you know, he was the guy that went out on scouting trips and went out on the bus  for barnstorming tours. Effa was the one in the office holding it down. She was the one negotiating contracts and ordering equipment and uniforms and buying the bus and making sure it had enough gas, all that stuff. And it was just so amazing to me. Then, you know, we fast forward what, 15 years when I'm like, all right, maybe I should write a book!

Amira: Wild. Wild idea. [laughter] 

Andrea: Craziness. Craziness. So, yeah.

Amira: That's really dope. No, I love that question because I always like to know how people came to Effa. For me, I was a baby grad student up in Cooperstown, which was like my first real kind of research trip out alone, and it was the whitest place I've ever done research. I don't think I saw a Black person for a week legitimately. I just didn't know what to do with myself during lunch hours when the archives were closed. And so for me, when I first saw her, I was literally in the hall of fame, just being chaotic, wandering around. And then I like did one of those double takes, like whose plaque is that? Like, I'm confused. Where's she coming from? 

Andrea: Same! Yeah.

Amira: I need know to all the stories, like please, somebody tell me what's going on. And they're like, oh, she's the first woman. And then probing a little bit more and being like, oh, she's mixed? Oh, she's like a Black woman? Like, wait, there's layers here! I am baffled that I've never heard about that. And so I always remember that moment where I had to literally do a double-take. And so, I know one of the things that a lot of people get very interested in about Effa is this question of her race. Now I'll be honest, lay my cards on the table – I'm very bored, but this particular interest in Effa in only that sometimes I think it eclipses some of the other tensions I'm more interested in which I'll ask you about in a minute. But I think for people who especially are new to Effa’s story, her racial ambiguity is something that holds a lot of interest. Our friend of the show, Shakeia Taylor, obviously has grappled with this. I will definitely tell you my read on it, but I wanted to know how you handle the question of Effa’s race and ethnicity and how she presented, and this question of who was this mysterious woman?

Andrea: Yeah. So I addressed that in the book and interestingly…So, I had multiple publishers. My book went to auction and I got to talk to different editors before we decided who we were going to go with in terms of publishing the book. Shoutout to my editor, Megan, who left Roaring Brook and is now at Bloomsbury, but she's the dopest.

But yeah, that question came up in the editor calls, like, yes, so, in some preliminary research that I did just Googling, like, this is the thing, and what is your plan for the book? How are you going to address this, particularly for young readers? And so I'm like, yeah, we'll just tell the truth, it’s fine. You know what I'm saying? Like, that will absolutely suffice.

And so the interesting thing to me is that if we look at the history, if we look at what documents we have and what information we have, we have census records, right. And marriage records for Effa that say she's Black. Okay? So now, already though, we got people like, yeah, but I don't know, right? Like she might've just said she was Black when she got married because you know, it's technically illegal, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm like, okay. But what about our mom though? 

Amira: That part.

Andrea: We have information that says her mom was Black, right? And so the question that I have said repeatedly, all the interviews that I've done thus far, is that we got to grapple with why we as society–

Amira: Are so persistent in trying to make sure that she’s white! 

Andrea: That part! Exactly that part. Like, we have decided this woman is white until proven Black. And even when we have the proof, we're still talking about it.

Amira: Listen, and this is exactly where I am, because I remember the first time I came into this conversation and I was really baffled by what felt like the multiple hoops people, mainly white male sportswriters, were jumping through to distance her from Blackness while Effa was running straight into it. Right? And we definitely have moments in her life where like many people who can pass, they chose to. We have certain moments where a calculation is made about how you need to slip in and slip out of racial categories to be upwardly mobile, to get employment opportunities. But you know, I remember listening to interviews with players who were like, look at her, she's a Negro lady. You know what I mean?

Andrea: Yes. Monte Irvin is like, look man, even if you wasn’t sure, like, by the time this chick, like…Come on now! 

Amira: Exactly! 

Andrea: She looked like your grandma! Like, what are you talking about?  

Amira: Monte was like, her lips though! Her lips though! [laughter] That oral history that we're talking about is really a riot. But that’s exactly what I was…And when I say I'm bored by this conversation, it's because so often I feel like it exists so out of the history of Black America, of passing – and this is what you do so well in the book when you grapple with this, right? It's like, this is not actually an atypical story of people who have to slip in various ways. That conversation of this idea that we are litigating her racial identity and invested in it is really illuminating.

Andrea: Invested, invested!

Amira: Invested! You know, and the primary source document that always got me about this…Have you ever pulled her death certificate? 

Andrea: I have not pulled it. No.

Amira: I’m gonna send it to you. If you look at her death certificate, it's so interesting. You look at the race on her death certificate and it says white, but if you look very closely at the “w” you'll see, there was a “b" there at first. I think about that all the time, like, even at a death certificate on the text, on the primary source that we can feel, there's this investment in literally super imposing rightness over that. 

Andrea: Right, right.

Amira: So anyways, I was really, really impressed by the way you treated it in the book and handled that part of her story.

Andrea: Yeah, I appreciate that. And yeah, I think, you know, to kind of just piggyback off of what you're saying, I think ultimately it says something about us as a people for sure that we're litigating this. I think it also speaks to the failures in whether it's the education system, whether it's us passing down…You know, I have kids, you have kids – how much are we teaching our children about who came before us and what life was like for them, right? Like if we have a real understanding of American life in the 1920s, when Effa is coming of age, particularly for Black people who are this fair skin, we don't really ask ourselves these questions. We understand how the world worked then, right? When we fast forward and there's this moment that everybody clings to in this interview, in this oral history she does, and she's like, yeah, I'm white. I'm like, she also says she was born in 1900 and ain't nobody questioning that. We know that chick was born in 1897, like be easy! She was lying. Okay?

Amira: Exactly, exactly.

Andrea: Again, I listened to that and I'm like, all right. And she was also talking to this white guy, right? Like as a journalist, I know that it's not even so much about the questions you're asking, but who's asking them and what kind of presentation does the interviewee feel that they need to come to the table with? I can hear all kinds of stuff in that conversation that is Effa again, still showing up, and being not the Effa that is at home with Abe, this very regular Brown dude from Virginia, or even Effa in the boardroom with these other Black owners of Negro Leagues teams. This sounds like the Effa who has the job as the hatmaker that typically goes to white women.

This sounds like the Effa who was, when she's traveling alone, may stay in a white hotel or may eat at a white restaurant. That's the Effa at that end of life interview that everybody always references. And so, yeah, it is not just this tendency to want to make her white. It is also, again, why do we not understand? How are we missing? And this goes to the point of why I want to write a book for kids. We have such a surface level on the whole surface level understanding of our history and the social dynamics that have ebbed and flowed throughout Black people, our time here in this country. 

Amira: Absolutely. And I think that the other part of that is like, can we sit and grapple with the questions that then arise if we can get past this one? 

Andrea: Right.

Amira: And so for me, thinking about Black women navigating the world of sports is obviously my wheelhouse. That's what I do. And what I found really interesting were these relationships that she had with her co-owners, with sportswriters, especially…I’ll never forget, I talk about this every time I can talk about it – that reading an article where Sam Lacey and other Black sportswriters are absolutely going after her for something. They're talking about her crying in a boardroom or doing something with her feminine wiles – which is like their favorite phrase to say – and then literally the next document I pulled in the archive was a letter from Lacey asking her for money.

Andrea: Girl…

Amira: Right? That was like, well, can I just hold this, please? Like, you're such a good friend. And so I was instantly captivated by this interior and exterior dance that was clearly done, that was completely influenced by gender politics, by class politics, by colorism, like all of that's bound up here. But what does it look like to understand her and then ask questions of Black sportswriters who in many other histories look very different than if you look up the history of baseball through Effa’s eyes or Tony’s or Mamie's or Connie’s – they look very different, because you start to ask different questions about them. And so, one, I would love to get your thought on that: her dynamic, navigating Black sportswriters and co-owners, and these kind of Black sporting spaces; and, two, you just dropped a really dope piece in the New York times this past week – everybody who hasn't checked it out, please do! It's called We Have No Right to Destroy Them. It dropped on a Jackie Robinson Day, which is fitting, or the day before.

But one of the things it’s grappling with was a very, very public feud that Effa had with Robertson about the impacts on the Negro Leagues after he integrated the major leagues and the years that followed. Effa was really the only voice out there talking about the cost of integration and these questions and in grappling with the way we celebrate Jack and barriers being broken without holding and sitting with this cost that is going to be bankrupting Effa and Abe, other Black ownership, an entire kind of Black institution and infrastructure set up obviously by segregation, but also a place where communities came together and congregations and flourished and weighing those costs along with these celebratory narrative of Jack is something that is required–

Andrea: It’s required.

Amira: If we center Effa in this story.

Andrea: Yeah. It's required if we center Effa, it's required if we want to really go forward and start to rectify, you know, these mistakes of the past, if we really want to put ourselves in a better situation. I feel like a broken record. Every interview I'm like, yo, if we don't understand the past fully, we can't build a better future. That's not me just coming up and being like, yo, the white people missed it! Like, Branch Rickey was a whole clown. Also gotta be like, yo, so did the Black people, right? This is how we move forward. This is how we learn, you know, going back again – I have four kids. I don't want my kids to have to start over, right? I want them to learn from my mistakes and pick up where I left off.

And we as a people because…And I understand this inclination because of the issues, the difficulties that we've had in this country, we tend to, when it comes to ourselves, particularly our elders and the people in the past, we tend to automatically put ourselves in this position that we always did the right thing, we were just doing the best with what we had and the man was coming to get us. And so everything we managed to do was a win. That ain't really true, right? That's not really true. Like I say all the time, Jackie was really perfect to integrate because this is a guy who a hundred percent cares for his people, right? Like this is a guy who is court-martialed because he's like, I'm not sitting at the back of the bus.

He is about his people, but he is young enough and inexperienced enough in the baseball world to not really care so much about the institution that he was about to tear down via his crossover. You cannot get Satchel Paige in that room and be like, yo, so this is where what we're going to do – it's like, first of all, I'm barnstorming on a plane. That's number one. [laughter] 

Amira: That part.

Andrea: I don't need your coins. But also he'd come up, like, this second iteration of the Negro national league is really Satch's league, it’s Josh Gibson's league. They are as married to its success as the league is married to the success of Satch and Josh. That’s not Jackie. Jackie is really removed from this as an institution. That matters, right? White people, we know if nothing else, are calculating. Like, they got the right dude. And if we don't sit up and talk about what that means, if we don't sit up and talk about the dynamics of Jackie being in that room alone with Branch Rickey, and just the transformation that we see in his own life, from that first biography he writes – with Wendell Smith – to the second one he writes on his own, right? 

Amira: Exactly.

Andrea: All of these things matter, and I think to go back to your question in this roundabout way, about Effa and the sportswriters, this is not like fast-forward 50, 60, 70 years. And we're like, oh my gosh, like the Black press, this amazing institution, and look at Sam Lacey and Wendell Smith. They were our heroes. They were the pioneers. And again, they get automatically cast in this inherently positive light. She is in real time with these dudes and they are people, like all of us, flawed. And she's like, absolutely, this is a mistake. This is a mistake. You can't go drag me in the press like this, you're missing it right here. You can't see the things that I can see. I say all the time, women on the whole, we are forward-thinking in ways that men aren’t always.

That is not to say that like we're better than men or anything like that, but I do think Effa just by virtue of being a woman saw things and understood things about the future of Black baseball in a way that men weren't thinking about. This is her owners, the co-owners that she's with, who are less inclined to speak up, but it's also the Black press who is doubling down on Jackie and the other guys who get signed and are completely abandoning Black baseball as if it is somehow unnecessary at this point. It's now, Black baseball, is obsolete because here we are, we have arrived. And Effa’s like, how can you not see?

Amira: Exactly.

Andrea: That it is not going to be this automatic thing, that we are sure going to lose something in the process. It's just like any other situation, right? These are real people in real time, having tensions and conflict, learning from each other, trying to influence each other, trying to push their personal agenda. And we lose all of that when we fast forward and we take this wide brush and say Jackie was a hero and so were Sam and Wendell because they were pushing for them and look, everything is great because integration is the best thing always.

Amira: Absolutely. I think it's so important that you put in that tagline, the rise and fall of the Negro Leagues and, through Effa, use this story to tell a more complicated history. I think that's to me what it comes down to. We're talking about a history that is complicated and messy, and so we're not freezing somebody like Jack ‘47 and then building monuments and things on this. And I think about this a lot about foundation. There's a very big difference between building on a faulty broken foundation and building on a messy, complicated one. You're building on a faulty foundation. You're just going to keep stacking until it's just going to eventually give way. You're never really actually addressing the root cause. Building on a complicated and messy one, the roots are solid, but you're figuring out where you actually need to build upon and what you need to leave be, and I think that that's why this complication that you're doing of these histories, of these retellings, are so important.

And especially as we think about, and we can transition into present day, women in ownership positions navigating these kinds of male spaces...We’ve seen, it seems like almost every week now in the last few months, another announcement, from Sarah Spain to athletes joining Angel City FC, right? Serena Williams’ daughter, Renee Montgomery obviously with the kind of dopest trajectory of them all. But I think we're definitely in this moment where even these things become obviously very celebrated because it's breaking certain glass ceilings. But I think, like, what happens if we keep being messy and complicated? What happens when we think about like, what does it mean to be an owner in a league that we're still saying is inequitable? What does it mean for women to be in these spaces?

You just made an argument that you think Effa was able to see things. Do you think some of the influx of women we have into ownership spaces and sports that we're having now are going to bring a new type of vision, or do you see ways in which it's a very barrier-breaking moment, but one that also needs to be kind of complicated and made messy?

Andrea: Yeah. I mean, I think I'm a proponent of always complicating things and telling the real stories and talking the real truths. But I do celebrate these owners. I think it's important. I think that if we really read history accurately, you know, if we sit with the things that I talk about in this book, is this idea that representation is not enough, right? And we’re seeing people come to that now – which I'm like, okay, yes…This is again where we shouldn't be starting over. We should be picking up where our elders left off. And this idea that representation is not enough well-established. This was established in the 40s and 50s, right? Like, it takes till ’59 for every team to get one player. There is no control here. We are offering up our best and brightest to make this holy white institution better. And they have no reason whatsoever to consider offering us a piece of the equity pie.

So, when I see women doing that, I think that's always a win. I think it's always important to have equity. Is it going to be messy? Yeah, because we're still talking about these things that for the most part haven't really been done, haven't been done certainly en mass like what we're seeing right now. But yeah, it's important. It's important to talk about these things. It's important to talk about the issues that they face even when they decide to buy a team, right? Like what does that look like, if we're thinking forward and we're thinking about the next group of women that's going to come in or the next people of color that are going to come in, well, how does it...I would have loved for, you know, when all that was going on, like with Diddy, when he was saying that he wanted to buy the Panthers or whatever, I'm like, brother, they will never let you, like, number one. [Amira laughs]

But we need to have that conversation! We need to have that conversation. We need to just not talk about the fact that we don't own anything – we need to talk about why we don't own anything. Let's talk about how hard it is to move into the next direction. That might mean we need to create our own thing. That might mean that we need to think outside of this current box that is prohibiting our inclusion. Like, all of these things are necessary to talk about.

Amira: Absolutely. And that segues perfectly into the other contemporary conversation that I see, and I would love to get your opinion on, which is this moment, right? Where you have on one hand this kind of certain celebration of the Negro Leagues. Obviously you have the MLB doing whatever the hell they thought they were doing [laughs] a few months ago with officially recognizing them now. Of course, flamethrowers, me and Howard Bryant did a hot take on who really benefits from MLB’s decision to recognize formally the Negro Leagues as a major league. So if you want to revisit that conversation, that's back in December of 2020. But you have this moment where the Negro Leagues are kind of experiencing a moment. HBCUs are experiencing both a rhetorical moment, but also you know, Eddie George right there in Nashville, just going to TSU. You have Jackson state, you have some of these programs getting more attention.

Andrea: Yup, yup.

Amira: And so I would really love to know what you're thinking about when we're talking about what is required to sustain spaces that were created by Jim Crow, right? Were created out of necessity and then broken apart by a very kind of narrow vision of integration. And I say a narrow vision of integration because the process that we had in this country was one of desegregation in which white spaces were kind of barely opened up for folks, but white kids weren't coming to Black schools, right? White kids, white players weren't going to the Negro Leagues, white people weren't coming to HBCUs, even though they've always been cosmopolitan and diverse. It wasn't conceived of as a two-way street. 

Andrea: That’s right.

Amira: And so what is the future of HBCUs? Of historically Black spaces? What is actually required to sustain them, to pour resources in them, et cetera?  And then what is a role of a Black institution in the year 2021?

Andrea: So this is a thing that my husband and I talk about this all the time because we have four athletes! And I'm like, yo, so if like, if it came down…And they're young, my oldest is only 13. But what happens to HBCUs is literally what happens to Negro league baseball, right? Now we have an option and Black people…This is what happened in Black communities across the country. Like, here we are, we're coming upon the a hundred year anniversary of Greenwood. And I tell people all the time, it wasn't the fire or the massacre that killed that community. They had to build back. They had built back in a year or two because they had no other option. They were sleeping in tents and they still couldn't go over to the white people cause it was still the 1920s.

What ultimately kills that community is first this highway being driven through it via the federal highway act of 1956. And now the people say, all right, do we build back or not? We have options. And when Black people, historically, when we have had options, we have chosen the other thing, because number one, I think it's part of psychological conditioning. We have been always, you know, since we were in shackles taught that the white is better, that's just what it is. And then when we start talking about resources and that allocation of resources, where it is, right? If you're a football player or a basketball player, I mean, I see the videos with LSU's weight room. I ain't gonna lie. [laughs] 

Amira: Right? I mean, Alabama has a whole ass spa, you know what I mean? And honestly to me, it's the resources for me. 

Andrea: It's the resources!

Amira: I think that that part of the conversation is so essential.

Andrea: It’s so essential. 

Amira: I saw a tweet the other day where somebody was like, do y'all really think like you would really want to be in like predominantly Black spaces? And it’s like, first of all, a lot of people exist already or have in various parts of their life in those spaces, but it's always been about resources. And when people are making claims about where they want to sit on the bus, or claims about educational resources, it’s not because they want to desperately sit on the front of the bus. It's not because they desperately need to go to the school that Betty Sue goes to. It's a pursuit of resources. And so what happens if we tell this history with that framework – that integration was not the goal, equity–

Andrea: That's right.

Amira: –was the goal. So, you know, I definitely appreciate your weighing in.

Andrea: Yeah. I don't know the answer to this, but it is going to take…If you're a top athlete coming out of high school, this is not something that we can level in a year or two, just by saying, okay children, all of you go here instead of there. I think honestly, you know, Eddie, George being here at TSU, I think Deion, you know, at Jackson State, I think those things are helpful because now we get attention – not necessarily through the player, but through the coaching, and maybe that brings more TV dollars and maybe, you know, there is interest that is generating there. I think it's going to be a much longer route if we're expecting…And I'm talking primarily about basketball and football, cause those are the revenue generating sports.

But if we're talking about if we’re trying to get however many top recruits in a year to just all of a sudden shift and go to an HBCU, it is a resources issue. So we got to figure out a way, whether that's going to some of these celebrities, some of these athletes, and asking them or inquiring of why they are not pumping these resources into these HBCUs, there has to be a level playing field in terms of resources before we can ever expect these athletes…I mean, again, I know my kids and they're like, okay, no. I saw the LSU weight room. [Amira laughs] I’m  just saying. Like, we are Blackity Black, Black, Black over here. And I'm like, listen, like don't you want to…? “Listen mom, but did you see the weight room though?” Like… [laughs] Right?! 

Amira: Absolutely. So, we've been having a lot of really complicated, fun, messy conversations – exactly the conversations I love to have. And I want to kind of circle back to something you raised earlier, which is your intentional decision to tell this story as a young adult book, and that's a really powerful choice, and I want to know what led you to that decision and what you think can be gained by telling these stories right to the youth?

Andrea: Yeah, well first, thank you. It doesn't always feel powerful. Like I always joke that, like, this is the least sexy genre of book publishing – kids, non-fiction, like, it's not where it's at. But it's important to me because again, to repeat my own self, I think we have to fully understand the past in order for us to build a better future. And when we look at what is going on in our society right now, we're looking at a bunch of adults…If I am going to take a positive, look at the situation, if I'm going to treat this like a glass half full thing and not, you know, assume that there is malicious intent or always overt racism – even though obviously sometimes there is – but a lot of people just don't know, right? When that New York Times article dropped, I had a whole bunch of white dudes who baseball for a living, like, this your whole paycheck, and it's like, “I had never heard of this!” or, “I never considered….” And I'm like, how is this possible? Right?

But also what does that mean? What does it mean when the guys who baseball for a living, who are making the rules and deciding who gets to be inside of which doors – when they don't know, what does that mean? I mean, I think we see it, and this is not just in baseball. This is throughout society, right? These people that end up in the boardrooms and in the Capitol buildings and are in positions of power when they don't really know. This is why we're fighting back and forth now and trying to explain why reparations are necessary, while we're trying to explain all of these different things. People just really don't know. So I'm like, yeah, you know, I want adults to read it. I think it is written in a way that adults can get into it and learn a lot from it. But ultimately I'm like, let's get these kids while they are young. Right? Before they have become set in their ways, while they're still so easily moldable and able to learn and absorb things and are open-minded and open-hearted enough to understand that they don't know it all, that maybe their parents don't even know at all.

This is the time to really be honest, and then hopefully, ideally when they become the ones in the boardrooms and the Capitol buildings and all of these things, they will keep these things in mind. They will have a better understanding of our past, and then we'll be better positioned to help us build a better future. 

Amira: I love it. I love it. And I just have to say it's a beautifully designed book. The pictures in here look like they've been taped in. It's kind of like you're reading a scrapbook. It's fun. It's just a fun, aesthetically pleasing design. So, definitely if you have young readers in your life, get this book into their hands. Baseball's Leading Lady: The Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues. Also pick it up for yourself, learn you something. And don't just have it be a decorative story, really sit and grapple. It feels good in your hands. Sit with it, sit with it for a while. Also, please check out your latest column as well, We Have No Right to Destroy Them. That was in the New York Times on April 14th. Where can the people find you if they want to follow you on social, and what should they be looking out from you next?

Andrea: I am on Twitter @AndreaWillWrite. I technically have an Instagram as well, but I've never posted. [laughs] I think I had to do a couple of Lives or something like that. So, mostly on Twitter. And yeah, I actually am announcing a new project next week.

Amira: Ooh!

Andrea: It’s also for kids – fiction though. My next non-fiction, I know what it is, the followup to this one. It has not been announced yet. Amira, you will be excited about it.

Amira: Ooh! I'm so excited already.

Andrea: But yeah, I have a really big, really exciting fiction joint that I'm announcing next week. And I've got some adult stuff in the works too, so I'm always doing lots of things.

Amira: Listen, sis, I can't thank you enough for coming on Burn It All Down and blessing us with your time and your energy and your voice. It is a pleasure to be in conversation with you again. We will be watching very closely to wait for this announcement because we definitely cannot wait to see what you're coming out with next. I wish you well, especially in these trying ass times, [Andrea laughs] and thank you again.

Andrea: Thank you. And I mean, anytime you want to have me back, I'm here with bells on.