A tight-knit group of oystermen on the bayou are struggling to survive after the oil spill shut down the oyster beds. Will a way of life die out? Part 2 of Losing Louisiana, a series originally published in onEarth. ELTON “HAMBONE” ENCALADE IS ONE OF THE FIRST oystermen to greet me as I pull into Beshel’s […]
Losing Louisiana
Originally published in OnEarth. The BP blowout caused months of pain and suffering for the people and environment of the Gulf Coast. But Louisiana was in trouble long before the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Its wetlands are disappearing at the rate of a football field every hour due to rising sea level, storm damage, and the […]
Youth and Promise at the DNC
An N.C. delegate to the Democratic National Convention, Raleigh’s John Verdejo sees similarities between his personal history and Barack Obama’s. Originally published in Indy Week. UNTIL HIS PLANE TOUCHED DOWN in Denver for the Democratic National Convention, John Verdejo had never in his life reset his watch. The 29-year-old’s personal history was contained entirely within the Eastern time […]
Whitewash
In his new autobiography, Jesse Helms sees himself as a humanitarian—not a racist supporter of brutal right-wing regimes who turned obstructionism into a foreign policy. Originally published in Indy Week. I’VE ONLY MET JESSE HELMS ONCE. I was profiling him for two national magazines during his 1996 Senate race, and for two days I shadowed him […]
A Taste for Tolerance
Years of struggle taught Charlotte, North Carolina, and other American cities that diversity is a growth industry. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. Charlotte TV station WBTV looks back at the student sit-ins in Charlotte. REGINALD HAWKINS COULD FEEL HIS HEART RACING as he and three friends made their way through Douglas Municipal Airport in Charlotte, North […]
Return to Loves Creek
Originally published in Indy Week. IT’S A WARM FRIDAY AFTERNOON, and I’m driving down Silk Hope Road through Alamance and Chatham counties. It’s a familiar route that I used to take several times a week, when I was reporting on the life of Siler City’s Loves Creek Hispanic Baptist Mission. For eight months in 1999 I threw […]
Surgical Strike
Originally published in Mother Jones. BARBARA HARRIS WAS EAGER TO BECOME a foster mother when she received a call from a social worker in 1990, asking her to take in an eight-month-old girl born to a woman addicted to crack cocaine. Harris, a waitress at a pancake house, agreed. Over the next two years, she […]
Silence in the Fields
The U.S. government is allowing farmers to fill thousands of jobs with foreign ‘guestworkers.’ The conditions are hardly hospitable—and those who speak out can be sent straight back home. Originally published in Mother Jones. THE GREYHOUND PULLS UP TO A TWO-STORY METAL WAREHOUSE in the tiny town of Vass, North Carolina. Efrain Madrigal gets off the bus. […]
A Hideous Hate Crime
In 1963, four African-American girls were murdered in Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Now the granddaughter of one of the bombers—and the sisters of a victim—confront Alabama’s racist legacy. Originally published in Glamour. TERESA STACY WAS STANDING IN HER KITCHEN on a hot Texas afternoon in 1997 when the local television news came on. It was one […]
Hispanic Diaspora
Drawn by jobs, Latino immigrants are moving to small towns like Siler City, North Carolina, bringing with them new diversity—and new tensions. Originally published in Mother Jones. THE DAY OF THE RALLY, Ruth Tapia awakes with a feeling of disgust. It’s a drizzly, overcast morning in February, and all is quiet on the street outside her small, […]
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