Episode 1: The Lucky Ones

By the 1960s, the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children was an early prototype of the for-profit prison. But it wasn’t designed that way. In this episode, we go back to the early 20th century when a Black woman and student of Booker T. Washington named Cornelia Bowen found ...  عرض المزيد

Survivors of Mt. Meigs share how they ended up in the juvenile justice system and what happened once they went down the long road to the reformatory. Lonnie and Johnny meet the foreboding superintendent EB Holloway, while Mary and Jennie must deal with the girls’ matron, Fannie B ...  عرض المزيد

Birmingham in Alabama was one of the most segregated cities in the USA in 1963. In May that year thousands of black schoolchildren responded to a call from Martin Luther King to protest against segregation at the height of racial tensions. It became known as the Children's Crusad ...  عرض المزيد

Since Chris is on vacation this week, we're re-sharing one of our favorite episodes. “I went because they didn’t want me there,” says Minnijean Brown-Trickey. It’s been more than 60 years since she made history. At 16-years-old, she and eight other black students found an angry m ...  عرض المزيد

In June of 1959, the torsos of two men were found in a rural part of northeast Alabama. The gruesome discoveries sparked a media firestorm as locals feared they had a mad man stalking their homes. These kind of gruesome murders just didn’t happen in rural areas where folks didn’t ...  عرض المزيد

Originally Aired: 11/23/2020 “Reverse racism” has haunted the fight for job equity for generations. How’d this bizarre idea become such a bugbear? One Supreme Court case, 50 years ago helps explain.  This week, our reporter Marianne McCune tells the story of that case -- and its ...  عرض المزيد