We Are North Nashville - podcast cover

We Are North Nashville

We Are North Nashvilleplay.prx.org

They've seen an interstate cut their once-thriving neighborhood in half. They've seen their community cut off from the commercial and cultural engines of the city. They've seen racialized terror visited on their own backyards. But through it all, they've fought to hold onto the place they love.

We Are North Nashville: The Podcast is about the lives of elders who call North Nashville home, in their own words. It's about the ways the elders have kept joy alive in their neighborhood in spite of all the challenges it has faced. It's about the history that newcomers to the city don't always know, or even think to ask about. It's about walking the streets and still seeing the way people held this place together, even when city planners set about ripping it apart.

This is a show about North Nashville. It's also a story about the United States, where Black communities have been cut apart, razed and deprived for generations in the name of progress that does not include them. More importantly, We Are North Nashville is what happens when the people who live history get to tell it.

  • Hosted by M. Simone Boyd and Andrea Tudhope
  • Produced, edited and mixed by Andrea Tudhope
  • Original music by S-Wrap
  • Additional production by Steve Haruch
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Episodes

Essential Salt [Feed Drop]

This week for We Are North Nashville, we're sharing a special feed drop. Essential Salt is a Maine Public podcast made up of six, half hour episodes. The series is produced by Maine Public’s Brenna Farrell and Jess Miller with support from Isaac Kestenbaum at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. In each episode, host Jess Miller introduces listeners to two archival Salt stories. Maine is known for its scenic beauty and its perch on the far northeastern edge of America. But much of what go...

Nov 06, 202530 min

Movement With Meklit Hadero

This week for We Are North Nashville , we’re sharing a special feed drop from Movement With Meklit Hadero — a podcast that explores the intersection of music, migration and identity. In this episode, you’ll hear the story of Peter One, an Ivorian musician whose journey from West Africa to the Grand Ole Opry reveals how extraordinary creativity often lives behind everyday jobs. Listen to Movement With Meklit Hadero on Apple , Spotify , or anywhere you get your podcasts. Follow Movement With Mekli...

Oct 23, 202526 min

Episode Seven [Bonus]: Good Neighbors

When Carlos Partee was growing up in North Nashville, this neighborhood was his whole world. Everyone was here: parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins. And even neighbors who weren't blood relations were like kin. People knew each other. Jerome Moore started a business with his father on Buchanan, a historic street that has seen revitalization in recent years. As entrepreneurs themselves, Carlos and Jerome see a lot of positive change in the form of new businesses in the area. But not all of the...

Sep 26, 202538 minSeason 1Ep. 7

Episode Six [Bonus]: A New Generation

Before he was an acclaimed poet and professor, Major Jackson was a kid from Philly who spent his summers in North Nashville — where his interest in language and storytelling first sparked. It’s a place that has cultivated wisdom, legacy and love for generations. A place that eventually drew Major back — to teach, but also to reconnect. In this episode, descendants of North Nashville OGs reflect on the kind of community care that’s sustained across generations, despite the lingering effects of ti...

Sep 19, 202535 minSeason 1Ep. 6

Episode Five: Belonging

John Streator Jr. was one of two African American photographers in Nashville back in the 1950s and ’60s. He was well known in the community, because he was everywhere — social clubs, sit-ins, food banks. Today, his daughter, Dr. Patricia Streator Jackson, still lives in the home she grew up in. The interstate changed North Nashville forever, and after decades of distress and underinvestment, it's changing again. This time, more affluent newcomers are moving in, often with little or no knowledge ...

Oct 03, 202434 minSeason 1Ep. 5

Episode Four: Repair

Keeping North Nashville clean is important to Larry Turnley Jr., who owns a trash hauling business. It's about making a living, but it's also about pride in community. His father, Larry Sr. — known in the neighborhood as Fever — now works alongside him. For a long time, this didn’t seem like it’d ever be possible. After the tumult of the '60s and '70s, the destruction that made way for the interstate, and the hard times that followed, Fever found himself among those in the community struggling t...

Sep 26, 202437 minSeason 1Ep. 4

Episode Three: Unrest

Barbara Jean Watson made history when she enrolled at the previously all-white Jones School in North Nashville. She and her family faced constant threats of violence as a result, and one night their back yard was firebombed. Her older sister Leitha Carter remembers how the family home became a hub of activity for the NAACP and SNCC. White opposition to desegregation was just one of the many destabilizing forces that shaped and shook the community throughout the Civil Rights era. Attorney Z. Alex...

Sep 19, 202432 minSeason 1Ep. 3

Episode Two: Eminent Domain

Thomas Wilson remembers seeing a white man pound a stake into the ground between a local school and the home where he lived with his parents. A fence went up, dividing the houses that would be demolished to make way for the construction of I-40 and those that would be spared. His family was forced out of their own house. Cheryl McReynolds' childhood home missed the same fate by just three houses. She still lives there today, keeping hope for renewal and remembrance in a rapidly gentrifying part ...

Sep 12, 202432 minSeason 1Ep. 2

Episode One: Home

The Rev. Dr. Margreat Smithson has dedicated her life to helping others. That instinct comes from the way she was raised by her village. In the North Nashville of her childhood, there were "neighborhood moms" like hers, who looked out for others. Rev. Smithson is one of the nine elders you'll meet in this podcast who remember this North Nashville — the one that existed before change came, in many forms, and disrupted the community. Hosted by M. Simone Boyd and Andrea Tudhope Produced, mixed and ...

Sep 05, 202430 minSeason 1Ep. 1

S1 Trailer

Introducing We Are North Nashville , a podcast about the lives of elders who call North Nashville home, in their own words. It's about the ways the elders have kept joy alive in their neighborhood in spite of all the challenges it has faced. It's about the history that newcomers to the city don't always know, or even think to ask about. It's about walking the streets and still seeing the way people held this place together, even when city planners set about ripping it apart. This is a show about...

Aug 30, 20245 min
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