The State of Things

Female candidates swept primary elections in Pennsylvania and Nebraska this week. Will this wave continue into the November midterm elections? And Wednesday’s teacher rally in Raleigh is part of a wave of teacher protests in red states. What impact could this have on the midterms?

Pauli Murray is an often-overlooked civil rights trailblazer. She staged her first “protest” at 5 years old when her aunt gave her grandfather three pancakes while she only received one. Murray was arrested for sitting in the whites-only section on a Virginia bus 15 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat.

For 32 years, the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society has been hosting its Carolina Blues Festival , which it calls the longest running blues festival in the Southeast. Joining host Frank Stasio for a preview of this year’s events is Atiba Berkley the president of the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society. He’ll talk about the preservation society’s commitment to bringing blues to the next generation.

A Wake County grand jury handed up felony assault indictments this week for Cameron Broadwell, a Wake County sheriff’s deputy and North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers Michael G. Blake and Tabitha Davis. The three are accused with violently beating and injuring Kyron Dwain Hinton, a Raleigh resident who was homeless at the time of the incident. Hinton was approached by law enforcement on April 3 in East Raleigh, and what happened next landed him in the hospital for three days with

More than 40 million people provide unpaid care to a family member or loved one, according to data from the National Alliance for Caregiving . But these statistics leave out youth caregivers: a group of more than a million young people under the age of 18 who care for a family member because of a chronic health condition, disability, or a mental health problem, including addiction.

When author Frank Morelli was in high school, his grandfather moved in with the family after he was diagnosed with Pick’s disease, a progressive form of dementia. Morelli noticed how his father struggled to become a caretaker, trying to keep his promise of giving his father a death with dignity as the disease progressed.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court issued a decision that created a roadblock for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. A three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service review of the pipeline. The federal review is known as an incidental take statement, and it is meant to set limits on killing threatened or endangered species during construction and operation.

Thousands of North Carolina teachers march through the streets of Raleigh on Wednesday to call for higher pay and for more resources for their students. The march is part of the wave of educator-led activism across the nation in backlash to federal and state-level education budget cuts.

Retired surgeon and former state Medicaid Director Robin Gary Cummings took office as chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in 2015. Cummings is a Pembroke native and member of the Lumbee Tribe. His tenure has been marked by efforts to expand economic and educational opportunities for residents of Robeson County, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the country.

Female and queer artists will make up a majority of the lineup at this year’s Moogfest in downtown Durham. It’s a roster that pushes back against the prominence of men as the creators, performers and promoters in the electronic music industry.