For our premiere episode, we broke from our usual one-on-one format to bring you an abbreviated — but nonetheless colorful and complicated — history of the Nashville Banner: a look at the days of a two-newspaper city, from people who lived it, day in and day out, in the storied newsroom at 1100 Broadway.

This episode was first broadcast in April 2024.

Guests

• Parker Toler, paperboy
• Mary Hance, reporter aka Ms. Cheap
• Kay West, writer aka Betty Banner
• Robert Churchwell Jr., son of Robert Churchwell, the first Black reporter in Nashville
• Tam Gordon, reporter
• Bruce Dobie, reporter
• Larry McCormack, photographer

Credits

• Host: Demetria Kalodimos
• Producers: Steve Haruch and Andrea Tudhope

Subscribe to Banner & Company on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or Amazon.

Further reading

• Alive, Dead and Alive Again: A History of the Nashville Banner

The post A Look Back at the Old Banner — From People Who Were There appeared first on Nashville Banner.

From a young age, Hal Cato knew he wanted to help others — from a chance encounter with a senior in an assisted living center to recruiting friends to help him deliver Meals on Wheels. That drive has brought him into leadership at some of Nashville’s most prominent nonprofits — including Hands On Nashville, Oasis Center and Thistle Farms. And it brought him very close to a run for mayor.

“I’m still attracted to the underdog today, those who are marginalized and just sort of on the outskirts,” Hal says. Today, he sits at the helm of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, which oversees more than 1,500 funds and hundreds millions of dollars to help those in need. How to best direct and coordinate those resources in a fast-changing city is a challenge Hal feels up for, even if it means changing

Disclosure: CFMT is a sponsor of Banner & Company. Sponsors do not influence coverage.

Guests

• Hal Cato, CEO, Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee

Credits

• Host: Demetria Kalodimos
• Producers: Steve Haruch and Andrea Tudhope

Subscribe to Banner & Company on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon or iHeart Radio.

The post Hal Cato: CEO, Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee appeared first on Nashville Banner.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised mass deportations, raising questions about the feasibility of such an operation and, at the same time, causing fear in immigrant communities across the country. Here in Nashville, local authorities have stayed away from strident rhetoric, but this week Tennessee lawmakers introduced two bills aimed at undocumented immigrants — one that would require law enforcement to transport them to “sanctuary cities” and another that would require state IDs to distinguish citizens from noncitizens.

Tessa Lemos Del Pino is the granddaughter of migrant farm workers who once associated with the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez. Today, she is the executive director of Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors, a nonprofit law office that helps people navigate the complex and time-consuming immigration system. Her office has been inundated with messages this week, as the specter of drastic enforcement measures hangs over undocumented Tennesseans and their families.

Guests

• Tessa Lemos Del Pino, executive director, Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors

Credits

• Host: Demetria Kalodimos
• Producers: Steve Haruch and Andrea Tudhope

Subscribe to Banner & Company on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon or iHeart Radio.

The post Tessa Lemos Del Pino: executive director, Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors appeared first on Nashville Banner.

The 2024 election is in the books. At the city level, Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit measure won big. What was different this time, as opposed to the failed 2018 plan? As expected, Republicans dominated statewide elections, but what comes next for Democrats, who eked out a must-win seat in the state legislature but made no significant gains?

And with a second Trump administration on the horizon, what could that mean for Tennessee’s congressional delegation? Demetria sits down with three members of the Banner team to dissect the results and discuss key takeaways.

Guests

• Steve Cavendish, president and editor
• Stephen Elliott, metro reporter
• Sarah Grace Taylor, state government reporter

Credits

• Host: Demetria Kalodimos
• Producers: Steve Haruch and Andrea Tudhope

Subscribe to Banner & Company on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon or iHeart Radio.

The post Nashville Election 2024: Analysis appeared first on Nashville Banner.

On Oct. 23, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti sent out a release about a 2022 plan to release and relocate vetted immigrants from Louisiana and Mississippi detention centers to Nashville. A plan that, in fact, never came to fruition.

Despite this, Skrmetti sued the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2023 for public records and correspondence around the thwarted transfer, including communications between key parties like employees of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition and Nashville’s mayor’s office. 

Skrmetti did not ask for correspondence with Gov. Bill Lee’s office in his official records request.

That suit was dismissed in September when ICE provided the AG with 384 pages of documents, which included emails and a spreadsheet from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) listing information about the immigrants set to be released, like country of origin, reason for release and crime.

In his press release about the documents, Skrmetti cast the immigrants as “dangerous convicted criminals.” 

But, the Banner reviewed the data and found that, of 7,737 vetted immigrants ICE was preparing to release, only 94 are listed as “convicted criminals.” That’s 1.2 percent. 

One hundred forty-eight detainees had pending criminal charges for things like traffic offenses and illegal entry, with a smaller portion involving violent crimes like physical or sexual assault. That’s 1.9 percent.

Additionally, of the 7,737 immigrants, only 96 were given a threat designation by ICE at all, and nearly half of those (46 detainees) were classified as Level 3, the lowest threat level.

In at least one email with Metro, ICE states that, of the people it planned to release, “none will be criminal or public safety threats.” 

Skrmetti’s dispatch a few weeks ago sent a starkly different message. 

“Immigrants are being used as a wedge in order to score cheap political points, and we’ve already seen how dangerous that rhetoric is in places like Ohio,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of TIRRC. “And so when we use incendiary language like the Attorney General, it puts us all at risk.”

In a written statement, Mayor Freddie O’Connell called the release a “mischaracterization” of what really happened. 

“I encourage people to read the documents and judge for themselves,” read the statement. “Our residents rightfully expect the city to prepare for and coordinate with our state and federal partners any time we are called upon to assist with the transition of people to our community, whether it’s the result of a federal program, natural disaster, or other emergency.”

Local immigration advocates, like Sherman Luna, told the Banner that this kind of collaboration is vital.

“TIRRC, like most Tennesseans, wants a safe and orderly immigration system that allows people dignity,” Sherman Luna said. “We welcome coordination between state, local and federal government, faith leaders and volunteers. In 2022, we were putting together the infrastructure to be able to have the capacity to welcome people with dignity. And that was thwarted in the end by the state.”

The AG’s office did not respond to the Banner’s request for comment in time for publication.

In late November 2022, ICE reached out to TIRRC to discuss a “possible cooperative partnership.”

Title 42 — a Trump-era immigration law that allowed U.S. officials to turn away migrants at the southern border to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — was expected to be repealed soon. In preparation for an influx of immigrants, ICE was beginning a nationwide process of clearing space in its detention centers.

On Dec. 5, 2022, an internal ICE email lays out a detailed process for who will be released and how it will be determined if someone is eligible for release. 

“Public safety and national security cases will remain in custody,” reads the email.

Shortly thereafter, ICE and officials from TIRRC and Metro met to discuss the logistics. In one email, an ICE official estimated that they could release several hundred immigrants per month, adding that Nashville was selected because the city was big enough to take on the number of immigrants that would be released without them being a burden on the resources of the city.

After some back and forth over a week, ICE met with Lee’s office to discuss the plan on Dec. 19. Internal ICE emails called the meeting “cordial,” going on to say that Lee’s office “understood the difficult nature of our agency and our position.”

The next day, Fox News published an article about the planned release quoting Lee calling the plan “irresponsible and a threat to the safety of Tennesseans.”

Following legal challenges from multiple states including Tennessee, Title 42 didn’t end up being repealed until 2023, causing the 2022 effort to release asylum-seekers into Nashville to fizzle out.

The post Skirmetti Warned of Dangerous Immigrants On Way To State, But Numbers Show Very Few appeared first on Nashville Banner.

In some ways, his upbringing helped prepare Tyler Mahan Coe for creating the breakout country music history podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones. After all, his father is David Allan Coe, and Tyler spent more than a decade touring with him as a member of his band. He also has childhood memories of stars like George Jones, thanks to a connection with producer Billy Sherrill.

But even that kind of proximity to country music doesn’t guarantee a gift for storytelling, or Tyler’s maximalist approach to taking the genre’s many crisscrossing storylines and turning them into wide-ranging, richly contextualized episodes. The podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones is the work of a true obsessive who not only cares deeply about the subject matter but also how it connects to other currents of history and culture. Tyler has adapted Season Two of the show into a new book focusing on George Jones and Tammy Wynette, with illustrations by former Nashvillian Wayne White.

Guest

• Tyler Mahan Coe, host of Cocaine & Rhinestones and author of Cocaine & Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette

Credits

• Host: Demetria Kalodimos
• Producers: Steve Haruch and Andrea Tudhope

Subscribe to Banner & Company on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon or iHeart Radio.

The post Tyler Mahan Coe, creator of Cocaine & Rhinestones appeared first on Nashville Banner.

A few days before Christmas in 2008, a six-story tall, 84-acre mound of coal ash — a byproduct of burning coal — collapsed at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tenn. The toxic sludge burst through a retaining embankment, knocked houses of their foundations and tossed cars around like toys. All in all, a billion gallons of toxic sludge filled the Emory River and 300 acres of the surrounding community of Kingston.

In his new book Valley So Low, writer Jared Sullivan examines the spill, the years-long cleanup and its aftermath. Although TVA officials told the public the coal ash was not toxic, many of the workers who toiled to remove the waste from the area eventually became sick. The book focuses on one small-time attorney and the legal battle that ensued over whether TVA and Jacobs Engineering, the company it contracted to remediate the site, should be held responsible.

Guest

• Jared Sullivan, writer and author of Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe

Credits

• Host: Demetria Kalodimos
• Producers: Steve Haruch and Andrea Tudhope

Subscribe to Banner & Company on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon or iHeart Radio.

The post Jared Sullivan, author of Valley So Low appeared first on Nashville Banner.

In June 2023, State Rep. Jeff Burkhart, a Republican from Clarksville, told two constituents that he believes that miscarriages and other pregnancy complications mostly occur the first time a person gets pregnant. The Banner obtained an audio recording of the conversation.

When one constituent, who asked to remain anonymous for this story, told Burkhart she had had five miscarriages, he stopped her. 

“So you had your first pregnancy – your first pregnancy was successful?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. 

“And then you had five since then that were miscarriages?”

“Yes.”

“I mean to me, and I’m just a guy who listens to… Most times, the pregnancies that go bad are usually the first pregnancy. I mean, that’s what you hear,” Burkhart said.

This is false. Miscarriages and other complications can occur at any time, and the likelihood increases with age as well as with certain health conditions. Certain complications from a previous pregnancy can, in fact, increase the chance of miscarriage in a subsequent pregnancy.

“That makes no logical sense to me,” said Nashville OB/GYN Dr. Nicole Schlechter. “With regards to getting to viability, the first pregnancy is not higher risk than any subsequent pregnancy.” 

She did not comment on when pregnancies “go bad” because it is not an official medical term. Schlechter did offer to “be a consultant for any legislator who has questions or lacks understanding and help them better understand the laws they are passing on reproductive health issues.”

Asked by the Banner to clarify his comments, Burkhart declined. 

One of the constituents in the meeting with Rep. Burkhart, who recorded the meeting, was Allie Phillips, who is now running against him in District 75. 

She and her fellow constituent met with Rep. Burkhart that day to talk about potentially passing a bill that would add exceptions to Tennessee’s abortion law for fatal fetal anomalies, according to Megan Lange, Phillips’ campaign manager.

Phillips shared that, because of Tennessee’s restrictive abortion laws, she had to travel to New York to get an abortion when her fetus was diagnosed with multiple fetal anomalies at 19 weeks. The diagnosis meant it had a 3 percent chance of reaching birth, after which it would only have survived six months to a year. Phillips told Burkhart in the meeting that her doctor also told her the longer she stayed pregnant the greater the risk would have been to her own health. 

It was this conversation that ultimately led Phillips to run for Burkhart’s seat. After speaking with her mother about Burkhart’s apparent lack of understanding of reproductive health issues, her mother suggested Phillips run, Lange said.

In the last session, Burkhart cosponsored legislation making it illegal to transport a minor to another state to receive abortion care. 

The upcoming session will likely see additional bills related to reproductive health, including one sponsored by Republican Senator Richard Briggs regarding creating an exception to Tennessee’s abortion law for “futile pregnancies.” Burkhart, it would appear, will not be among supporters of such legislation in the house. 

In the 2023 meeting, Phillips asked Burkhart to imagine his own daughter in her position, carrying a non-viable fetus, and the other constituent asked him to imagine that that fetus did not have a brain. He responded, “I am going to encourage her to have it.”

The post Rep. Jeff Burkhart of Clarksville Believes Miscarriages, Complications Mostly Occur During First Pregnancies appeared first on Nashville Banner.

For Nashville native Anne Byrn, baking is an art, and everyone who mixes, measures and bakes is an artist in their own right — whether that means following a beloved recipe to the letter, or improvising to get the taste just right. Her own mother was an excellent home cook who only had to read a recipe to know what it would taste like. And she was an early influence on Anne, who is now a bestselling cookbook author.

Her latest book, Baking in the American South, is much more than a cookbook; it’s also a story anthology, tracing the history of 200 recipes — everything from creamed chicken on egg bread to cantaloupe cream pie — through the diverse cultures and foodways of the region. For Anne, a former food editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (and onetime Banner intern), sometimes the story is just as sweet as the food.

Guest

• Anne Byrn, cookbook author, most recently of Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories

Credits

• Host: Demetria Kalodimos
• Producers: Steve Haruch and Andrea Tudhope

Subscribe to Banner & Company on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon or iHeart Radio.

The post Anne Byrn, cookbook author appeared first on Nashville Banner.

With no budget and no blueprint, Hazel Joyner-Smith programmed her first film festival in just two weeks. It was a whirlwind experience, but she got it done. And she hasn’t looked back since. The International Black Film Festival has been going strong here in Nashville for two decades, and this year’s edition, which begins this week, showcases a range of films from features to shorts to documentaries — many of them produced in Tennessee.

Hazel grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina, and credits her father for instilling a tireless and exacting work ethic, which came in handy during her years as a classroom teacher and later as an educator at Fisk University. Through it all, she’s maintained a sense of curiosity and desire for excellence that have made her a pillar of the city’s film community.

Guest

• Hazel Joyner-Smith, founder and CEO, International Black Film Festival

Credits

• Host: Demetria Kalodimos
• Producers: Steve Haruch and Andrea Tudhope

Subscribe to Banner & Company on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon or iHeart Radio.

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