A beautiful voice.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Andrea Lewis - In memoriam

The news was hard to believe. On November 16, several KPFA listeners informed me that their popular talk show host and our contributing writer Andrea Lewis had died the day before of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty-two.

A few months earlier, she'd confided in me that her heart wasn't in great shape, and that she'd gone into the hospital for tests, but I had no idea her situation was so serious.

After all, she'd been to Madison in May for our centennial celebration, where she served effortlessly as a cohost and panelist. And I'd just corresponded with her by e-mail in October about her contribution to "Our Favorite Books of 2009" in the last issue.

I went back and reread her picks, and I was struck by a line in her review of Tim Wise's Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama . Wrote Andrea: "His message is to whites, whom he challenges to speak out against racism wherever and whenever it occurs."

This was her message, too. At our conference, she participated on a panel entitled "Defending Civil Rights for All." She talked about the various oppressions she'd had to deal with her whole life: being black, being female, being a lesbian, being a woman of size, and becoming disabled. She stressed how important it was for all of us to call out bigotry of every stripe--and not to let it slide.

She had a wide range of interests, including music and sports, and she wrote with authority on many subjects, both for The Progressive and for our affiliate, the Progressive Media Project.

The last Progressive Media Project piece she wrote was about Billie Jean King receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"King's most memorable battles were not fought on the tennis court," she wrote. "She lived as an out lesbian before it was remotely fashionable to do so. She fought for equal pay for women athletes, and by...