The State of Things on WUNC

Scholar and author E. Patrick Johnson knew from experience what it was to be “othered.” As a black, gay man who grew up in the South, he belonged to multiple communities that were marginalized and attacked. He documented oral histories of men with similar identities in his 2008 book “Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South.”

Marty Richardson was in high school when he started a deep dive into the history of his people: the Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe. He emerged from dusty library archives with the epiphany that his ancestors spoke Tutelo-Saponi, a language that had since nearly disappeared.

As a little girl in Taiwan, Jan-Ru Wan grew up expressing herself not by speaking but through making things. Creating art and working with material allowed her to connect her feelings to the world around her.

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina died this Sunday at age 76. He was the second in his family to serve in Congress and was known for voting across party lines and for crossing those lines himself. He served as a Democrat in the North Carolina General Assembly for five terms before switching to the Republican party ahead of his first run for the U.S. House.

Throughout his career, Dr. Charles van der Horst has always prioritized close relationships with his patients. He was on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic in the state and opened up an AIDS ward at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 1980s.

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech struck analysts as both bipartisan and deeply divided. He called for unity and shared bipartisan victories, and he also promised he would build a border wall and warned lawmakers that there cannot be peace and legislation while there are ongoing investigations.

It is not uncommon for police officers to have side jobs as security guards. But for former Raleigh police officer Joe Winters, his side job was more like a passion. From the early 1940s to the mid ‘70s, Winters was both a full-time cop and a concert promoter.

Andrew Dillon grew up in Jackson, Mississippi where blues was not just a style of music, it was part of the culture and lifestyle. His father raised him in a house where music, instruments and performance were part of their everyday lives. It is no wonder Dillon brought that tradition with him to North Carolina.

Why is Asheville not fighting a redistricting plan from the state legislature? Asheville’s local elections use an “at-large” system, which means that the six city council members and mayor are elected citywide. But last summer, state lawmakers created five districts for the Asheville City Council and delayed local elections for a year.

Some day-to-day experiences alert people of poverty in their community: long lines at the food pantry, individuals asking for change near a freeway exit, or family members juggling multiple jobs. But legal scholar Gene R. Nichol believes that the experiences of day-to-day poverty experienced by more than one million North Carolinians are invisible to most.