Telling stories of gun violence deaths almost cost this reporter his life

When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Trymaine Lee was 38, he suffered a sudden heart attack that nearly killed him. The incident made him reconsider the years he had spent reporting on the lives cut short by gun violence — and the stress it had put on his body.

“For the first time really, I had to look deep and engage with what was truly bearing down on my heart,” he says. “And for me that had been more than a decade of telling stories of Black death and survival.”

Reporting Post-Ferguson: A Journey To ‘Very Dark Places’

MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee was one of several African-American journalists who shared their stories of reporting on racially-charged violence with Code Switch’s Gene Demby.

As a reporter in Trenton, Philadelphia and New Orleans, Lee covered the deaths of young men who look