Tanya Mosley

We'll be right back after a break.

This is Fresh Air.

I want to take us to a more current day, 30 years later, 2013, after George Zimmerman is acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin.

President Obama walked into the White House briefing room and said something that no sitting president has ever said before.

And I want to play it.

Let's listen.

That was former President Obama talking after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin.

The reaction from conservative media was immediate.

A Fox News radio host called him race baiter in chief.

And you write about this moment in the book.

What did Obama's willingness to speak, he's speaking as a Black man, not just a president, actually expose where we were at the moment as a country?

What did it unleash?

With President Donald Trump.

You've spoken about your origin story about growing up in Detroit during a period of what really was profound racial and economic change.

I mean, in the same way that every major city was dealing with it.

But we're talking about the 80s in particular, the 70s and the 80s.

You were a white girl in a majority black city.

And I know the neighborhood that you're from because I'm from there, too.

I just found that out that we're from the same neighborhood.

How did that shape the questions that you ask?