Episodes

  • Ferguson started with strangers and endures with family

    Ferguson started with strangers and endures with family
    Sep 26 2024
    Kayla Reed and Brittany Packnett Cunningham found their voices as activists during the Ferguson Uprising. They also forged a bond and strong friendship. So what happens when Brittany leaves St. Louis and Kayla stays? And how does that impact the community work they did over the years?
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    39 mins
  • A 1972 uprising exposed the Veiled Prophet. Ferguson protesters keep that pressure on power

    A 1972 uprising exposed the Veiled Prophet. Ferguson protesters keep that pressure on power
    Sep 19 2024
    Ferguson showed what happens when a community comes together to protest power and obtain meaningful change from it, but power doesn’t like to retreat. What happens to people who feel elite, and untouchable, when the city around them rises up to expose and oppose them? What happens when power takes a different shape — obscuring its nature and staying in its position? In this episode, we examine a protest story decades before the Ferguson Uprising — the story of those who worked to take down the Veiled Prophet.
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    50 mins
  • 'Ferguson and beyond' — A live community conversation 10 years later

    'Ferguson and beyond' — A live community conversation 10 years later
    Sep 12 2024
    On Wednesday, Aug. 6, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR news co-hosted "Ferguson and Beyond: A Community Conversation 10 Years Later" at Greater St. Mark Family Church, just miles from the epicenter of protests sparked by the killing of Michael Brown, Jr. by a Ferguson police officer in August 2014. This bonus episode presents highlights from that event, with a panel and audience Q&A moderated by NPR “Morning Edition” host Michel Martin and a special performance by St. Louis spoken word artist, poet, and community arts educator Pacia Elaine Anderson.
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    58 mins
  • What makes a 'good' school? Black parents face tough choices

    What makes a 'good' school? Black parents face tough choices
    Sep 5 2024
    In St. Louis, many Black families moved to St. Louis County for better school districts. But after some time, those districts started having their own issues: white flight, decaying property values and consolidations. Some families moved even further northwest, only to face neighbors trying to prevent Black history from being taught. In this episode, we explore why St. Louis schools are more segregated than they were 10 years ago — and meet the parents determined to do right by their kids.
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    28 mins
  • The Ferguson sledgehammer: Breaking systems and building new ones out of the Uprising

    The Ferguson sledgehammer: Breaking systems and building new ones out of the Uprising
    Aug 22 2024
    Ferguson exposed systems that disenfranchise Black St. Louisans and fail their basic mandates to provide safety, health and community to the people who depend on them. Inspired by the Uprising and driven by experience and anger, many people found their voices and created their own new systems designed to help their community thrive. In this episode, we explore the creation of Love Bank Park, the closing of the Medium Security Institution known as the Workhouse, and the restorative justice movement.
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    44 mins
  • The art of the Ferguson Uprising in words and music

    The art of the Ferguson Uprising in words and music
    Aug 15 2024
    What do you do when you get so angry, the emotion overtakes you? When injustice sparks a fire that won’t die down? For artists during the Ferguson Uprising, their craft offered them a way to make sense of Michael Brown Jr.’s killing. This special episode features songs, poems and a play from St. Louis-based artists who — 10 years later — are still reflecting on how Ferguson changed them and their art.
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    24 mins
  • The Ferguson Uprising will be livestreamed

    The Ferguson Uprising will be livestreamed
    Aug 8 2024
    Many people found their power and voices in the midst of the Ferguson Uprising. Some used streaming technology as they found themselves defining their own class of media, with no editors and no rules. They brought the story of the Ferguson Uprising live to our computers and smartphones. Their dispatches from the frontlines kept viewers up to date while the national news played catch up. Their stories didn’t end in 2014, though, as many of them continued to demonstrate for causes in the St. Louis area to the present or until their deaths.
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    48 mins