The Gateway

Some Midwest states have little to no regulations of Flock Safety cameras or other automated license plate readers. As surveillance companies face bipartisan backlash, that is likely to change during the next legislative session.

As a Black teen joining the punk rock scene in a predominantly white Maryland suburb, G’Ra Asim was sometimes an outsider among the outsiders. His parents moved east from St. Louis when he was 9.

Asim is now a creative writing professor at Washington University, and plays guitar in two bands. In a new book of essays, he charts his path through 21st-century romance and pop culture.

Route 66 turns 100 this year. One of the prominent features on the mother road that made car travel from Chicago to California possible was the small motels people would stop at along the way. Most of them are long gone, but one of them has been rescued, and is back open. St. Louis Public Radio’s Jonathan Ahl takes us to the Shamrock Court Motel in Sullivan.

Since the St. Louis band Foxing went on hiatus, Conor Murphy has focused on Smidley, and they have new album with new inspiration.

There's a headstone in the central Illinois town of El Paso for the first Black man to cast a ballot in the state, but historians aren't sure if that's where David Strother is actually buried.

Since Missouri streamlined enrollment in its full-time virtual learning program for K-through-12 students following the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment has quadrupled. Growth in demand for online education comes at a time when more teachers appear frustrated with being in a classroom.

One of the world’s great migrations has begun.

The eastern monarch butterfly is flying south, through the central U.S., to overwinter in Mexico. A decade ago, a federal task force laid out a plan to help monarchs along their journey by returning roadsides to native habitat, including Interstate 35 that goes through part of Missouri. Harvest Public Media’s Rachel Cramer explores what happened to the “Monarch Highway.”

The Black Rep is celebrating 50 years. Founder and producing director Ron Himes says each season he’s just surviving, but the theater’s mission to expose communities to Black stories will be its continued legacy.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Andrea Henderson takes us behind the scenes of one of the largest African American professional theater companies in the country.

St. Louis Development Corporation CEO Stephen Westbrooks says for downtown St. Louis to feel like a neighborhood, it needs nearly double its current population. He says new incentives can get it there.

Missouri's congressional map is in turmoil following contradictory orders from a U.S. Supreme Court justice and a federal judge in St. Louis.