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Stories

A young girl with red ribbons in her hair on a swing, set against an American flag, symbolizing themes from the American blues poetry "I Hear America Singing the Blues" by Jacqueline Allen Trimble.

I Hear America Singing the Blues

After her daughter was caught in the crossfire of a shootout, Jacqueline Allen Trimble penned a poem that asks: how do we sing when every note sounds like a gunshot?

Blood Memory

The Ring Shout — an ecstatic and transcendent spiritual dance rooted in West Africa — rose historically through the South as a tool of Black resistance. Today, its cultural significance and power serve the purpose of collective healing and the expression of Black joy.

Elvis Saves

How a Yankee found religion in the music of the boy from Tupelo

Digging on Willi

Musicians as exciting as Willi Carlisle come along once in a blue moon.

Willi Carlisle’s Song of Himself

“Salvation.” It’s right there in our name. It’s an elusive state attained via unexpected detours and poorly drawn maps. Willi Carlisle’s second album, “Peculiar, Missouri,” lays bare the peculiar path that this Arkansas man traveled to a place where he can see salvation waiting for him.

Jericho Road

An Episcopal priest’s poem ponders what we mean when we ask the question, “And who is my neighbor?”

Conquer the Soil

Atlanta’s Abra Lee is on a quest to recognize Black America’s greatest horticulturists.

Not Now

A short story about a North Carolina country woman who takes a bus into a better, brighter life — but one that lasts only for a day.

A Welcome to GPB Listeners

A special message to everyone who’s visiting us for the first time from Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Snap Peas and Timber Rattlers

Poet Joshua Lavender, a South Georgia native, brings us verses that resurrect how folks talk in the country.

To Carver With Love

Last week, Charles McNair brought us the story of the 50-year reunion of the Dothan High School class of 1972, the first fully integrated class in that Alabama town. This week, his friend James “Shack” Thompson brings us a remembrance of the Black high school that closed when desegregation happened.

How God Got His Money

Dr. Deidra Suwannee Dees ponders the question: How does the money from the offering plate get all the way to God?

Something to Read: Coloring the News

Rob Rushin-Knopf examines two books that explore how White-owned news outlets in the 20th century perpetuated Jim Crow — and how Black journalists like Ida Mae Wells and W.E.B. DuBois battled back.