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Tanya Ballard Brown

Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR

Tanya Ballard Brown is a Southern girl, an editor for NPR.org and a wild dreamer who laughs loudly and often.

As an editor for NPR.org, Tanya collaborates with editors and reporters from the national desk to create compelling Web content that complements radio reports; brainstorms and develops Web-only features; manages online producers, Kroc Fellows and interns; and, line edits stories appearing on the website. Projects she has worked on include the "Dirty Money" series, winner of a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting, a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and an Edward R. Murrow award; the "Friday Night Lives" series, winner of an Edward R. Murrow Award; and, "WASP: Women With Wings In WWII," winner of a GRACIE Award.

Tanya is former editor for investigative and long-term projects at washingtonpost.com and during her tenure there coordinated with the print and online newsrooms to develop multimedia content for investigative reports, including the creation of "Washington Post Investigations," the first definitive home for the Post's award-winning investigative journalism on washingtonpost.com.

Tanya also led production of the 2006 "Being a Black Man" series, which won numerous awards including the Peabody, Scripps Howard National Journalism award, Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and a regional Emmy award. Other Web projects included "Silent Injustice" and "Walter Reed and Beyond."

A native of Charlotte, N.C., and an alumna of N.C. A&T State University, Tanya is a former congressional fellow with the American Political Science Association. She has been a reporter or editor at GovExec.com/Government Executive magazine, The Tennessean in Nashville and the (Greensboro) News & Record.

In her free time, Tanya sings show tunes and dreams of being a bass player. Or Sarah Vaughan. Whichever comes first. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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Book Reviews
7:03 am
Wed May 15, 2013

Easy Rawlins Is Alive, Or Is He?

Credit / Marcia E. Wilson
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I've been following Easy Rawlins since reading Devil in a Blue Dress in the '90s. That's a lot of time to give to a character. And as I read Little Green, I realized that I hadn't been following Easy, the character, all these years. In the past I was more invested in other parts of the stories.

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The Two-Way
3:36 pm
Wed April 10, 2013

American Tribe Fights To Halt Artifact Auction In Paris

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Originally published on Thu April 11, 2013 9:37 am

An auction of sacred Native American artifacts scheduled for Friday in Paris is stirring up controversy on both sides of the Atlantic

Seventy Hopi "visages and headdresses" — some more than 100 years old — will go on the block at the Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou auction house, which estimates the sale will bring in about $1 million, according to The New York Times.

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The Two-Way
5:57 pm
Tue February 26, 2013

Can U.S. Embassies Be Safe Without Being Unsightly?

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Credit Shaun Curry / AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. Embassy in central London in 2009.
Credit Shaun Curry / AFP/Getty Images
The current U.S. Embassy in central London was designed by Finnish-born American architect Eero Saarinen in 1960. Saarinen also designed the St. Louis Gateway Arch.
Credit Angelo Carconi / AP
An Italian security policeman checks the main entrance of the U.S. Embassy in downtown Rome in 2008, ahead of a visit by President George W. Bush. The embassy building is over 300 years old and was once the home to the first queen of Italy, Margherita.
Credit Joh MacDougall / AFP/Getty Images
View of the entrance to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin in 2009. The new building opened in 2008 and exemplifies the new design standard to maintain security without sacrificing beauty.
Credit Marco Ugarte / AP
A policeman stands in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City in 2008. This embassy was built in 1961 and is more in line with the fortress-style embassies.
Credit Sia Kambou / AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. Embassy in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, was evacuated on Dec. 28, 2012, because of security concerns as the CAR government continues to combat rebels.
Credit Khaled Desouki / AFP/Getty Images
An Egyptian protester stands above the entry of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Sept. 11, 2012, during a demonstration against a film deemed offensive to Islam.
Credit Kieran Timberlake / U.S. Embassy
A rendering of the new U.S. Embassy in London that is expected to open in 2017. Susan Johnson describes it as a fortress that has been softened and feels more open.
Credit U.S. Department Of State
The embassy in Baghdad features a more fortresslike design.
Credit Teh Eng Koon / AFP/Getty Images
Local and foreign journalists visit the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Aug. 5, 2008. This massive embassy is the second-largest in the world after the heavily fortified compound in Baghdad.
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Originally published on Tue February 26, 2013 7:05 pm

There's been a tug of war between aesthetically pleasing and safe when it comes to American embassies around the world.

Many embassies have been slammed as bunkers, bland cubes and lifeless compounds. Even the new Secretary of State John Kerry said just a few years ago, "We are building some of the ugliest embassies I've ever seen."

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The Two-Way
1:24 pm
Mon February 25, 2013

No More 'Negro' For Census Bureau Forms And Surveys

Credit Carolyn Kaster / AP
Question 9 on the first page of the 2010 Census form. After more than a century, the Census Bureau is dropping use of the word "Negro" to describe black Americans in its surveys. Instead of the term, which was popularized during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, census forms will use "black" or "African-American."
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The Census Bureau announced Monday that it would drop the word "Negro" from its forms, after some described it as offensive. According to the Associated Press, the term will be replaced next year by black or African-American. From the AP:

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The Two-Way
4:13 pm
Wed February 6, 2013

Game On! Rare 1865 Baseball Card Tossed On The Auction Block

Credit Library of Congress
The Library of Congress' version of the rare Brooklyn Atlantics baseball card.
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Originally published on Mon February 11, 2013 11:46 am

Update at 8:06 p.m. ET. Card Sells For $80,000

The nearly 150-year-old Brooklyn Atlantics baseball card that was was discovered late last year in a photo album bought at a yard sale has sold for $80,000 — $92,000 if you count the auction house's buyer's premium.

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The Two-Way
12:07 pm
Thu January 31, 2013

Dear Lawyers: Order In The &*%# Court!

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Originally published on Thu January 31, 2013 8:39 pm

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The Two-Way
6:12 pm
Tue December 18, 2012

Our Pancakes Are Saved! Charges Filed In Canadian Maple Syrup Heist

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Fresh maple syrup in two maple leaf-shaped bottles, with other bottles behind. Police officials have arrested three men who allegedly siphoned the sweet treat from 16,000 storage barrels stored in a Quebec warehouse.
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Originally published on Wed December 19, 2012 6:51 am

After months on their sticky trail, Canadian police have finally fingered the people allegedly involved in the great Canadian maple syrup caper Bill Chappell told us about in August.

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The Picture Show
1:35 pm
Mon December 10, 2012

A Black And White 1860s Fundraiser

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Credit Charles Paxson / Library of Congress
Rosa, Charley and Rebecca are three of eight freed slaves who sat for portraits in 1863-1864 that were sold to raise money to fund schools for emancipated slaves in Louisiana. The three were chosen because it was believed their near-white complexions would draw more sympathy — and support — from a country torn apart by slavery and civil war.
Credit Charles Paxson / Library of Congress
Credit Charles Paxson / Library of Congress
Credit Charles Paxson / Library of Congress
Credit Charles Paxson / Library of Congress
Credit Charles Paxson / Library of Congress
Credit Charles Paxson / Library of Congress
Credit Library of Congress
Fannie Virginia Casseopia Lawrence, a freed slave, was adopted by Catherine S. Lawrence. Abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher presented Fannie to his congregation at Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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Originally published on Mon December 10, 2012 5:05 pm

They look like any other 19th century vignettes and portraits of children kneeling in prayer or cloaked in the U.S. flag.

But these cartes de visite (a calling card with a portrait mounted on it that was all the rage during the 1860s) featured Charles, Rebecca and Rosa — former slave children who looked white.

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The Two-Way
2:10 pm
Wed November 21, 2012

How Did Thanksgiving End Up On Thursday?

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Credit National Archives
Snippet of a letter F.B. Haviland sent to President Hoover in 1929 asking him to move Thanksgiving to Friday.
Credit Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum
A snippet of a 1933 letter from the Downtown Association of Los Angeles asking President Roosevelt to push back Thanksgiving by a week.
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Originally published on Wed November 21, 2012 5:30 pm

Move Thanksgiving to Friday? That's what F.B. Haviland asked President Hoover in 1929.

Didn't happen. But while we're on the subject, ever wonder why we carve our gobblers on the fourth Thursday of November? Hint: It's not because Thanksgiving Thursday is more alliterative than Thanksgiving Friday.

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The Picture Show
10:11 am
Fri October 12, 2012

'Vintage Black Glamour' Exposes Little-Known Cultural History

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Credit Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
That's Bananas: "Whether [Josephine Baker's] getting a pedicure or she's walking down the street or she's relaxing in a yard somewhere, I just love the variety of pictures of her," Gainer says. "The banana skirt is a part of who she was, it's the most famous thing, but it just annoys me when that's just the only thing. ... There was a lot more to her than that."
Credit Robert Scurlock / The Smithsonian Institution
Actress Fredi Washington circa 1940s. Washington played Peola in the 1934 Academy Award-nominated Imitation of Life.
Credit The Schomburg Center
Langston Hughes, Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Rudolph Fisher and Hubert Delany (brother of the Delany Sisters) overlooking St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem in the 1920s.
Credit William Gottlieb / Library of Congress
Duke Ellington, amid "his 20 suits, 15 shirts, suede shoes and his ever present piano" in his dressing room at the Paramount Theater in New York in September 1946.
Credit Robert Scurlock / The Smithsonian Institution
Argentine dancer instructing a group of young women behind her in a dance at Howard University in February 1963.
Credit Scurlock Studios / The Smithsonian Institution
Camille Nickerson was noted for her research on the music and culture of Louisiana Creoles. She earned a B.A. and an M.A. from Oberlin College and also studied at Juilliard and Columbia University. Nickerson collected, arranged and published Creole folk songs and, during the 1930s to 1950s, lectured and performed as "The Louisiana Lady."
Credit William Lovelace / Getty Images
Lena Horne, the sultry American singer who appeared in several musicals in the '40s and was a regular of the Cotton Club, trying on a dress May 4, 1956.
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Originally published on Fri October 12, 2012 5:03 pm

I was scrolling through my Tumblr feed a year or so ago, when I saw a photo of Joyce Bryant. The caption said she was once dubbed the "black Marilyn Monroe" and was mentioned many times in Walter Winchell's gossip column.

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