The State of Things

Eastern North Carolina’s Tobacco State League only lasted for five seasons. From 1946 to 1950 teams including the Sanford Spinners and the Lumberton Auctioneers battled for baseball greatness and ticket sales. They entertained crowds eager for a return to normalcy after World War II. Many of the players had recently returned from war, others were college baseball stars, and still others were just hoping to make a better hourly wage than they could earn in the local mills.

Growing up in South Los Angeles, Dwight Mullen remembers constant tension between the community and police. He specifically recalls the 1965 Watts riots and the impact it had on the city.

High-level U.S. military officials are clarifying the policy surrounding transgender service members after President Donald Trump announced a ban of transgender members of the military via Twitter. Trump cited “tremendous medical costs and disruption” as a cause of the ban. Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a message to top military officials clarifying that “no modifications” to the military’s transgender policy will come into effect as a result of the

President Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric made it clear that he intended to crack down on illegal immigration. Shortly after he took office, memoranda released by the Department of Homeland Security seemed to confirm his intentions. The department boosted hiring for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and expanded the list of crimes for which people could be deported.

Growing up in Chapel Hill, Jonathan Byrd never thought he could make a career out of playing music. But some soul-searching after a stint in the U.S. Navy and a series of disappointing jobs led him to question why he was forcing himself into doing things he wasn’t good at and didn’t love. Jonathan began touring and performing his original songs, folksy ballads infused with bluegrass-style flat-picking and classic rock foundations. With “Pickup Cowboy” Johnny Waken, the duo aims first and

The federal regulatory body responsible for assessing for the environmental effects of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline recently released their final report . The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission determined the project will incur “some adverse effects” but proper safety and environmental mitigation will reduce the risk “to less-than significant levels.”

Photographer Chris Bickford has traveled the world and soaked in different landscapes and cultures, but there is a special kind of serenity he only finds at the North Carolina shore. For more than a decade, Bickford has lived in the Outer Banks taking pictures of the region's shifting sands and close-knit surfing community. He's gathered a collection of black and white photographs in a new book called “ Legends of the Sandbar ” (Burn Magazine/2017).

Brigid Washington grew up with the Caribbean flavors of her family's native Trinidad. Ginger, coconut, fresh seafood and other ingredients shaped her palate and her experiences in the kitchen. But food was not an important part of her adult life until, as a dissatisfied writer living in Raleigh, she felt compelled to walk into the kitchen of Bloomsbury Bistro and ask the chef to teach her the culinary arts. That brazen request led to culinary school and a cookbook. “ Coconut. Ginger. Shrimp. Rum

Over the course of two decades, church leaders of the Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, North Carolina manipulated and abused congregants from Brazil, according to an investigation by the Associated Press. More than a dozen former members report being told to leave their family in Brazil to join the church in N.C. However, after they arrived they say they were forced into hard labor without pay and physically and emotionally abused.

Tashni Dubroy has served as president of Shaw University in Raleigh since 2015. As president, Dubroy has helped bolster the South’s oldest historically black university. She has been credited with increasing the school’s enrollment and closing a $4 million fundraising gap. Earlier this month, Dubroy was recognized for her work and awarded Female President of the Year at the 2017 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Awards. Now Dubroy is stepping away from Shaw University to work for