Playboy Interview JEMELE HILL

A candid conversation with the Emmy-winning writer, thinker, truth-teller and Detroiter who never could just “stick to sports”

- KELLEY L. CARTER

This past January wasn’t the first time white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers overran an American city, bringing chaos and carnage. Those who watched their newsfeeds in abject horror on January 6, 2021 as domestic terrorists swarmed the Capitol might have been reminded of August 12, 2017, when a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia led to violent clashes and a deadly attack that former President Donald Trump would also condone. This was not an aberration, it turns out, but a harbinger of what was to come. Days after Charlottesville, Trump referred to the “very fine people on both sides” of the incident—an equivocation Joe Biden later said catalyzed him to run against Trump. He also reacted sympathetically to the rioters last month.

Of the voices that emerged to help the country contextualize and understand the moment, one stood out for its clarity and courage.

“Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists,” tweeted reporter Jemele Hill.

Then co-anchor of ESPN’s SportsCenter, Hill had said what many Americans knew to be true. But as so often happens, speaking truth to power came at a price, altering the course of her life and career.