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The Promise

with host and reporter Meribah Knight
A Peabody Award-winning series about inequality and the people trying to rise above it, with host and reporter Meribah Knight. In Season 1, we told the story of Nashville's largest public housing complex, smack in the middle of a city on the rise. In Season 2, we explore how that divide reveals itself in the classroom. One neighborhood, two schools — one black and poor, the other white and well-off, and the kids stuck in the middle.

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How we reported this story: Over nearly two years, Meribah Knight immersed herself in the neighborhood and in Warner Elementary, the school featured in this season. She gathered more than 300 hours of tape, conducted more than 60 interviews, filed numerous public records requests, and traveled to the National Archives in Morrow, Ga., to sift through thousands of pages of court documents from Nashville’s 43-year court battle over school desegregation. Learn more...

Listen: The Promise Radio Special

Meribah Knight

April 23, 2021

Listen

The hour-long special delves back into history, chronicling the city’s epic 43-year battle over school desegregation and the devastating sacrifices one Black family made in the name of progress and equity.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 2, Episode 8: The Final Exam

Meribah Knight

October 19, 2020

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It’s February 2020, and Warner Elementary is rising from one of the lowest performing schools in Tennessee to one of the best. But we all know what happens next. And at a school with low-income students, the challenges of a global pandemic hit especially hard.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 2, Episode 7: The Recruitment Divide

Meribah Knight

October 12, 2020

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There was a time when the decision of where to send your child to school was relatively simple: public or private. Now, those choices have multiplied — and the resulting system of school choice hasn’t solved the inequalities at play.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 2, Episode 6: A Reckoning

Meribah Knight

October 5, 2020

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Last fall, parents from Lockeland Elementary met to talk about the elephant in the room: Their school was now the whitest school in the entire district. But not that long ago, an idea was floated that could have changed the makeup of Lockeland’s student body — and it did not go well.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 2, Episode 5: Warner’s Hope

Meribah Knight

September 28, 2020

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Warner Elementary is about to turn itself around. It finally has all the right tools to be successful — an infusion of cash, an energetic principal. But will white families choose to send their children there?

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 2, Episode 4: What You Can’t Unsee

Meribah Knight

September 21, 2020

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In a neighborhood with tons of Black families, Willie Sims’ daughter was the only Black child in the kindergarten class of one East Nashville elementary school. Then he started hearing murmurings from other families, white families. They were mobilizing against resegregation. Did he want in?

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise, WPLN News

Season 2, Episode 3: The Unraveling

Meribah Knight

September 14, 2020

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After 43 years of courtroom battles, Nashville’s landmark school desegregation lawsuit was settled. In the eyes of the law, the city finally made an honest effort to racially integrate its schools. But in truth, the matter was far from settled.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 2, Part 2: The Nashville Way

Meribah Knight

September 7, 2020

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In 1954, the famous Brown v. Board decision ruled that segregated schools violated the constitution. But in reality, that decision changed very little in Nashville. Segregation was an architecture, and to pull it apart was a grueling endeavor.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 2, Part 1: A Tale Of Two Schools

Meribah Knight

August 31, 2020

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It’s the start of the 2019 school year, and two elementary schools in Nashville are about to be at the center of a neighborhood battle over the resegregation of schools.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 2 Coming Soon

Meribah Knight

August 2, 2020

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Season 2 of The Promise grapples with some of the most divisive topics in America: public education and race. This is a story about one school trying to stay afloat, a neighborhood divided over race and economics, and a city that’s resisted school desegregation every step of the way.

Filed Under: Education, Race & Equity, The Promise, WPLN News

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