Special Episode: Branded

Memory Wars brings you the latest work of reporter Mallory Noe-Payne.

The poll tax. Literacy tests. Terror at the ballot box. All of these are voter suppression methods synonymous with the Jim Crow South.

But today, in 2023, a vestige of Jim Crow still lurks in Virginia’s Constitution: felony disenfranchisement.

Virginia is one of only three states that permanently strips people with a felony conviction of their right to vote. And the power to restore that right rests in one person’s hands, the Governor.

In a special one-hour program, reporter Mallory Noe-Payne brings us one man’s story — and how it weaves with decades of history.

Listen to Branded, a special documentary from Radio IQ and Virginia Public Radio.