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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...

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

Season 1 Follow Up: Letting Go

Meribah Knight

November 1, 2019

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Ms. Vernell has another big decision to make: to stay in Cayce through the chaos of redevelopment, or to leave? Her conclusion reveals something about this long, messy process to overhaul Nashville’s public housing.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 1, Bonus 2: The Big Man Interview

Meribah Knight

November 15, 2018

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If you’ve listened to The Promise, you no doubt remember Dexter Turner, aka Big Man. We met him in episode 2. In this bonus episode, Meribah Knight speaks with Big Man months later, live on stage at Nashville Public Radio’s Podcast Party.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 1: Bonus

Meribah Knight

April 27, 2018

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We return to the James Cayce Homes to follow up with residents amid the $600 million overhaul. But in checking back, we trip into some news. And we’re reminded, yet again, of how difficult it will be to pull off this massive redevelopment.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 1, Part 6: The Future

Meribah Knight

March 14, 2018

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Does this big idea to have low-income and higher income people living side-by-side really make a community better, safer, healthier? As season one of The Promise comes to a close, we dig into the fundamental question driving this massive overhaul of Nashville’s public housing.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 1, Part 5: Get Some Gone

Meribah Knight

February 21, 2018

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What happens when you try to leave Cayce? There is a saying in Nashville’s James Cayce Homes: “Get some gone.” Three simple words that describe the urge, the mission, to move out, to get away from the city’s oldest public housing project. Tonya Shannon grew up in Cayce. And she was determined to get out. So at 18 years old, she got some gone. But leaving the place is rarely a clean break.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

Season 1, Part 4: The Great Divide

Meribah Knight

February 14, 2018

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This is a story about the assumptions we all make. And the secrets we keep. With WPLN reporter Meribah Knight as the go-between, Big Man, a public housing resident from the Cayce Homes, walks across the street to meet the wealthy couple who live in the fancy new home on the hill. In breaking the silence between the two sides of the gentrifying neighborhood, a friendship begins to form — only to be dashed in a way no one could have expected.

Filed Under: Race & Equity, The Promise

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WPLN News Investigates: Behind The Blue Wall

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