Every week, we round up news and talk to interesting people doing important things across the Southern U.S.
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Headlights Ep. 57: Covering Queer Kentucky
All states have queer people, but not all states have a statewide news outlet dedicated to telling their stories. That makes QueerKentucky stand out. The nonprofit LGBTQ newsroom covers state politics and issues, as well as culture and health. This week’s conversation is with Executive Director Missy Spears, who talks about trying to reach and…
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Headlights Ep. 56: Pride in Arkansas
This week we talk to Dolores Wilk of Central Arkansas Pride about their advocacy for the state’s queer population, and the importance of visibility — including a Pride celebration right in front of the state Capitol Building.
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Headlights Ep. 55: The Young, Gifted and Green
LaTricea Adams learned about environmental racism first-hand, growing up in Memphis and seeing the differences between Black and white neighborhoods. She now leads Young, Gifted and Green, a nonprofit that trains young people in organizing and environmental justice.
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Headlights Ep. 54: The Leftists of Texas
Texas conservatives like to cultivate an image of the state as a frontier of rugged individualism and unbridled capitalism. But it is also the land of the Cowboy Strike and the Texas People’s Party, a contested terrain with an often overlooked history of radical politics. That’s what writer and Austin native David Griscom brings to…
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Headlights Ep. 53: The Memphis Massacre
When the all-white Republican supermajority in the Tennessee Legislature carved up Memphis into three congressional districts during the first week of May, they insisted that race had nothing to do with it. But when it comes to Memphis, race always matters. This week, we listen to the voices raised in protest during Tennessee’s rapid-fire special…
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Headlights Ep. 52: Inside the Evangelical Right
South Carolina writer Rick Pidcock grew up in the conservative evangelical movement and has become an astute observer and critic of it. As a columnist for Baptist News, he has been raising alarms about the ongoing growth of Christian nationalism.
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Headlights Ep. 51: The Trans Panic Continues
Another year, another cluster of hateful anti-transgender bills proposed in our state legislatures. This week, we round up some of the worst laws passed this spring in Southern states to further bully and harass trans people.
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Headlights Ep. 50: Rev. Lawson’s Legacy of Nonviolence
Nonviolent resistance was the core strategy of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, and its chief architect alongside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was another pastor, Rev. James Lawson Jr. Like King, he studied the success of Gandhi’s anti-colonial resistance in India, and he answered King’s call to teach its precepts to…
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Headlights Ep. 49: Who Are the Young Democrats?
The Democratic Party has an identity problem with voters nationwide, and especially in the South. But a rising wave of young party activists is seeking to bring new energy and ideas into some of the most conservative areas of the country — like Knox County, Tennessee, which has been sending Republicans to Congress since the…
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Headlights Ep. 47: El Paso at the Crossroads
El Paso is a city at multiple borders — not only between countries, but cultures, languages, and histories. This week we talk to journalist Jazmine Ulloa, an El Paso native whose new book about her hometown dives into more a century of its history. Following the stories of five families, she traces the ways El…
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Headlights Ep. 46: The Air in Cancer Alley
Everyone knows the air around Louisiana’s Cancer Alley is bad. But how bad? And what’s actually in it? That’s what two scientists at Johns Hopkins University set out to understand. Their work so far has shown the air in the communities around massive petrochemical plants has as much as 10 times higher levels of toxins…
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Headlights Ep. 45: A Stand for Georgia Immigrants
As minority whip for the Georgia state Senate Democrats, Senator Kim Jackson helped lead the fight in this session for a package of bills aimed at reining in aggressive immigration enforcement in the state. Republicans have blocked them, but this week Jesse talks to Jackson about the proposals and the public outcry that led to…