Michelle Alexander

On the second anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti that killed roughly 300,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless, we speak with Randall Robinson, author of "An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President." "Makeda," the new novel by TransAfrica founder Robinson, is set at the dawn of the civil rights era. The book follows a young man coming of age in segregated Richmond, Virginia, who discovers his roots in Africa through his blind grandmother. "Sometimes when we think of slavery, we calculate the economic consequence of it," Robinson says. On this eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, we host a wide-ranging discussion with TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson and author Michelle Alexander about the mass incarceration of African Americans that has rolled back many achievements of the civil rights movement. Today there are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. Democracy Now!, a daily independent newshour