The perils of hiking while Black
A DISTINGUISHED writer and editor, Joseph Lee Wood, was also a former Eagle Scout and passionate birder, who, the day after his arrival to the Unity ’99 journalism conference in Seattle, Washington, rented a car and drove to the Nisqually entrance of Mount Rainier, nearly ninety miles southeast, with binoculars in hand. He shared breakfast at the Westin Hotel with then Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley, along with seven other journalists and scholars, including Harvard professor Cornel West. He scheduled to meet a colleague the following day and then left for a short hike in the park.