Minding the Education Gap

Thetis White’s class is diverse—filled with students from different races and backgrounds, who are all taught by a Black man. That’s not uncommon at Monroe Elementary in Brooklyn Park, a diverse suburb of Minneapolis, but it is rare in Minnesota as a whole, where fewer than one percent of teachers are Black men.  Experts say […]

Read More…

Becoming a Black Homeowner in the Twin Cities

Buying a home is a rite of passage, a life-changing step—but in the Twin Cities especially, this crucial key to accumulating and passing down wealth is much harder to come by if you are Black. Just 25 percent of Black residents of Minneapolis and St. Paul own their homes. That’s far below the national average, especially […]

Read More…

Colorism and Skin Lightening Products

Especially in the United States, many think of racism as a black and white issue—but less talked about is colorism, the preference for lighter skin within communities of color. Safiya Mohamed is a Somali American journalism student at the University of St. Thomas, where our Under-Told Stories Project offices are based. Our PBS NewsHour report […]

Read More…

Reconnecting Rondo

Minnesotans, now more than ever, are waking up to the realities of racial inequity in their communities. In St. Paul, activists with ReConnect Rondo have a new suggestion: they want to build a land bridge over Interstate 94 to rejoin the old Rondo neighborhood, which was destroyed decades ago by the construction of the freeway. […]

Read More…

Michael Osterholm on the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout

It’s April  2021—the COVID-19 pandemic has been omnipresent for more than a year, and vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are rolling out across the United States. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve reported on essential workers, focusing especially on some of the most overlooked employees – in the U.S. some 50,000 meatpackers have had COVID-19 […]

Read More…

A Mother’s Love

Lisa Clemons is a former Minneapolis police officer who founded a non-profit called A Mother’s Love—a brigade of people in bright pink t-shirts trying to bring back the metaphorical village they say it takes to raise a child. Clemons dreamed of being a cop since she was young, but left the department 20 years ago for […]

Read More…

Bringing Back the Buffalo

Charging Buffalo is the first butchering facility on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota – the economic development alone is welcome in one of the poorest communities in the United States, but a place that treats the sacred animal with honor and respect means something more. Bamm Brewer is a member of the Oglala […]

Read More…

The Condom King, Mechai Viravaidya

In the Bangkok restaurant Cabbages and Condoms, rubbers are everywhere: on sculptures, lanterns, even a condom Santa Claus at Christmastime.  The place has become an icon for what’s widely regarded as one of the world’s most successful family planning programs.  Bringing a little humor to a taboo-laden topic is the trademark of Mechai Viravaidya—or as […]

Read More…

Defunding the Police

After police killed George Floyd on May 25, Minneapolis and St. Paul saw weeks of protests that spread across the world. Never before has such a clear demand emerged from the demonstrations: defund the police. The Minneapolis City council unanimously advanced a proposal at the end of June to create a new Department of Community Safety and […]

Read More…

“Minnesota Nice” if You’re White

Our team actually lives in St. Paul and Minneapolis…which, on a fateful day in late May, became the epicenter of a protest movement that’s swept the world since: the death of George Floyd. We’ve been on the frontlines of this story for the PBS NewsHour.  Alongside NewsHour producers Mike Fritz and Sam Lane, we produced […]

Read More…

Molly Melching’s Breakthrough in Senegal

Molly Melching arrived in Senegal in the 70s as a student for what was supposed to be just six months, but instead spent the majority of her life working through the organization she founded, Tostan—which means “breakthrough” in the Wolof language, to convince more than 8,000 communities across eight West African countries to abandon female […]

Read More…

George McGraw Digs Deep

George McGraw and his organization, Dig Deep, used to bring water access to communities in Africa.  A few years ago, he turned his attention to the United States—he now works in the Navajo Nation. The native reservation spans twenty seven thousand square miles across parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, where 40 percent of the […]

Read More…