The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1970, Charles M. Blow is an award-winning journalist and op-ed columnist for The New York Times. He is also the author of the 2014 memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones. He splits his time between his primary residence in Atlanta and his second home in New York City.

Blow spent the first years of his life with his grandparents in Kiblah, Arkansas, before permanently relocating to Gibsland, Louisiana. He graduated from Grambling State University, a historically Black university, then moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked for the Detroit News. In 1994, Blow joined The New York Times as a graphics director. He won an award for the newspaper’s graphic coverage of the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War. He joined National Geographic as its art director in 2006 before rejoining the Times as a columnist in 2008. He is also a frequent commentator on CNN.

In the years preceding the publication of The Devil You Know, Blow ruminated on what pathways Black people could take toward Black power. Even in the supposed “racial reckoning” that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Blow felt trepidation and resignation as he watched the anger translate into nothing substantive (1-2).