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.

At a prayerful and music-filled ribbon-cutting ceremony Sunday afternoon, American Baptist College dedicated its new special collections room at the Susie McClure Library. 

“We are very, very proud to open the archives,” ABC president Forrest Harris told the Banner. 

The dedication came as the school continues to celebrate its 100th anniversary year, and the ceremony marked the official opening of the room to anyone interested in the school’s history and its significant place in U.S. history. John Lewis and C.T. Vivian studied here, and many of its students participated in Nashville’s anti-segregation sit-ins and other Civil Rights actions.

“Researchers and scholars will come to this place … and uncover the ways in which history needs to be told,” Harris said.

“The library is the heartbeat of the campus,” Dr. Febbie Dickerson, vice president of academic and student affairs, told the audience, which included former Deputy Mayor Brenda Haywood, Civil Rights activist Gloria McKissack and Tennessee State University professor and historian Dr. Learotha Williams, Jr. “Today we are here to dedicate a space that will play a significant role in telling our story.”

Dr. Angel Pridgen, director of library services, thanked Dickerson for “taking a chance” in hiring her to take over the library, as well as a number of colleagues in attendance.

“I want to acknowledge the librarians that came before me,” Pridgen said, drawing special attention to Dr. Janet Walsh, now at TSU, who was one of her predecessors. “I’m loving the work that she has done before me and seeing the evidence of the work.”

Also honored at the ceremony was the late Rev. Dr. Julius R. Scruggs, who, as an ABC student, nearly lost an eye during Nashville’s 1960s sit-ins, which he participated in alongside Diane Nash and others. Scruggs was a lifelong friend of the school and member of its board for 40 years, as well as a former president of the National Baptist Convention. He passed away earlier this year. Many of his papers and personal effects are included in the new collection, and his family was on hand to pay tribute. 

Surrounded by family, Scruggs’ wife, Josephine, cut the yellow ribbon in front of a door leading to the special collections room.

“To honor Dr. Scruggs, and make his living legacy available to our students means everything to me,” ABC Chief of Staff Phyllis Hildreth told the Banner after the ceremony. “As the daughter of HBCU graduates, as one who’s been honored to teach and work in this particular HBCU, it means everything to know that we can continue to preserve our intellectual legacy and power with the strengthening of our archives.”

A work in progress

The Susie McClure Library, named for the late friend of the school who passed away in 2023 at age 107, is still in the process of processing its extensive archives. Beginning this week, the HBCU Digital Library Trust visits the ABC campus, bringing with it a group of archivists to help further catalog the school’s collection.

When Dr. Angel Pridgen first arrived at ABC to take the job of director of library services she was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material collected over 100 years.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,’ ” she told the Banner last month as she was readying the special collections room for its public debut. The library had just undergone a renovation and there were boxes everywhere.

“So we just went through the boxes, putting black and white pictures with one another … organizing, advocating and for housing materials and just so we had these big, clean, neat piles,” she said. “And then we went and we got an inventory sheet.”

Going through these boxes, making these neat piles, digitizing and creating metadata for all these pieces of historical ephemera — it’s a daunting task. There are hundreds of dissertations dating back decades. There are speeches from the National Baptist Convention. Piles of photographs, correspondence and pamphlets dating back to the 19th century. But the work comes with many rewards.

One day, looking through a yearbook from the 1990s, Pridgen found a black-and-white photo of Coretta Scott King. She hadn’t known that King had ever been on campus, but this piece of proof was important, especially since so many with direct memories of those times have passed away or retired from the school. Through other photographs, Pridgen also discovered that James B. Cayce, a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr.’s, had taught at the school.

There are also many items pertaining to John Lewis, who was very active on campus, and a class president, before becoming an icon of the Civil Rights movement. In one letter, sent after he was arrested in Alabama, Lewis apologized for having to miss commencement. “I hope the graduation exercise was good,” the letter reads in part. “Please remember the 44 of us who are in jail in your prayers.”

“I just thought that was amazing that we do have that,” Pridgen said. (This is one item that isn’t on view in the special collections room; it’s kept in a vault.)

Since taking over the library and embarking on the special collections project — some of which is available online in a digital repository — Pridgen has worked with the Smithsonian, including on training community members in archiving, as well as the National Archives. When the HBCU Trust arrives on campus, they will join a growing list of contributors to the school’s efforts, including students from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and Middle Tennessee State University. 

Community members have also pitched in. 

“Some of our volunteers, they were able to identify the people in the photos,” Pridgen said. “They were like, ‘That’s my relative. That’s my grandfather, my great grandfather,’ and tell us their story.“ North Nashville, she said, is “so interconnected.” And she sees the community as key to the project, which she hopes will take no more than two years to complete.

“It’s not just African American Baptist history, it’s everybody’s history,” she said. “And I think that’s so important  to make it discoverable and accessible.”

The post American Baptist College Dedicates New Special Collections Room to Its Library 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.

As of November 2024, the account A Girl Has No President has more than 820,000 followers on Instagram. That following includes scores of celebrities. But the creator of the account chooses to stay anonymous, in part because of threats against her and her family, and in part because she is not interested in notoriety. She also rarely grants interviews, but made an exception for this episode of Banner & Company.

She talks about why she created the account in 2016 out of “unadulterated anger,” how growing up poor in Nashville has influenced the way she thinks, and how she and Demetria once crossed paths many years ago — well before there was any such thing as social media.

This episode was first broadcast in April 2024.

Guest

• Anonymous, A Girl Has No President

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 A Girl Has No President: anonymous Instagrammer appeared first on Nashville Banner.

Last Wednesday night, the visitors center conference room at Fort Negley was filled to capacity. Community members gathered to hear how the historic site and surrounding park will be repaired, upgraded and, in some areas, completely transformed under Phase One of the Fort Negley Master Plan. That proposal was finalized in 2022, with an estimated cost of $50 million. At the time, then-mayor John Cooper called the fort “the most important spot in Nashville.”

Among those in attendance were Dr. Learotha Williams Jr., professor of African American and public history at Tennessee State University, part of the consulting team that has helped guide the project, and musician Kix Brooks, who is part of the Fort Negley Advisory Committee.

This year, Metro Council allocated approximately $17 million for Phase One of the project, and according to Richie Jones, partner at Hodgson Douglas Landscape Architects (HDLA), $5 million of that has already been spoken for: $3 million went toward the purchase of an adjacent property along Bass Street, and $2 million went to stonework at the fortification itself. 

Mary Miller, a project manager at HDLA, gave a presentation outlining what work will be included in Phase One.

Repairs, retrofitting and re-interpretation

In addition to the repairs to the stonework already completed on the fort itself, there will be extensive rebuilding of the walking areas on the fort, including better access to overlooks, as well as new interpretative elements telling the history of the fort and offering glimpses into what it, and the surrounding city, looked like during the Civil War. 

This is a major theme of the updated Master Plan: providing historical context for visitors to understand the significance of the place. Built in 1862, Fort Negley was the largest Union fort. It was constructed by approximately 2,700 free and enslaved African American laborers, only a fraction of whom were paid for their work. It is also a UNESCO Site of Memory, the first U.S. location to receive this designation.

Where Greer Stadium — former home to the minor league baseball team the Nashville Sounds — once stood, there will be a two-acre memorial lawn dedicated to those who lost their lives building and defending the fort. To the north will be meadowlands and walking trails. In the southeast corner will be a new area known as Freedom Plaza, which will also provide street-level pedestrian access to the park from the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood. 

In turn, Freedom Plaza will connect to a 20-foot-wide promenade that leads toward the Visitors Center. Phase One also includes a further reconfiguration of access to the park. First, the stone gates that were built by the Works Progress Administration as part of the New Deal will once again serve as the main entrance. A new parking lot will be created along Chestnut Street between the stone gates and the new Freedom Plaza.

HDLA’s Jones said that the plan was for a two-phase project, but that he thinks it will most likely take three and will require 12 to 18 months to complete after ground is broken for Phase One some time in spring of 2025.

More to the story

While the fort itself is incredibly important historically, the surrounding area is also rich with significance. 

Nashville’s first free Black community was formed at the foot of St. Cloud Hill after the Civil War. Known as the Bass Street community, it was largely composed of people who had built and defended Fort Negley. The neighborhood was later destroyed to make way for the construction of I-65, and its residents scattered to other parts of the city.

The block or so that remains of Bass Street borders the Adventure Science Center, and as part of the Phase One construction, a temporary interpretive wall will be installed, with materials that tell some of the story of the community. There will also be an archaeological dig in this area to potentially uncover and preserve artifacts from the neighborhood, though that work may continue beyond Phase One.

Jeneene Blackman is a descendant of Bass Street community residents and president of the African American Cultural Alliance.

“It’s been a decade since Kwame Lillard started on this process,” Blackman told the Banner. “So I’m excited for Phase One. … Freedom Plaza, especially, makes me happy because it lights the path of those who came before us.”

Public input for the current Fort Negley Master Plan began in November 2021, and Blackman has been heavily involved along the way. She said she feels she’s been heard.

“When I look at the plans, I see my voice,” Blackman said. “I also want to encourage others to come alongside me as well.”

The post Fort Negley Master Plan Prepares to Begin Construction 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.

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.