Feature Stories
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CMS Teachers Face Decisions as Students Return to In-Person Learning
Ashley Alston, a teacher at Olympic High School starts each of her classes by asking her students how they are feeling. As older students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) haven’t yet returned to in-person learning, they answer through their computer screens, giving her a variety of responses. Most of them have…
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Migrant Meatpacking Workers Prepare Turkeys Amid COVID Clusters
Jessica spends her days wrist-deep in turkey. As one of thousands of meatpacking workers in North Carolina, she cuts their neck bones, removes the shanks, the crop, and the organs no one wants to be confronted with when they handle, prep or eat the bird. She makes sure each fowl…
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District Attorney Announces Reshuffling to Handle Homicide Backlog
Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather announced sweeping changes to his office’s organization and priorities this week that aim to help confront a backlog of homicide and violent crime cases brought about by a shutdown of the courts during the COVID-19 pandemic and a recent rise in violent crime locally. …
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Neighbors Oppose Massive Industrial Development in West Meck
As I walk with Missy Eppes through the yard of her home on Moores Chapel Road, we pass a few roosters roaming the driveway. We also pass a few Volkswagen beetles and buses parked in the yard, where her husband works on them throughout the year in preparation for the…
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Man Held at Butner Dies of COVID-19 Before He Can File Suit Against Prison
John Dailey tried to sue over COVID-19 conditions at his prison, FMC Butner, but he died before his case could be filed. Butner Correctional Complex, a sprawling facility about an hour outside Raleigh, is North Carolina’s only federal prison. More prisoners have died of COVID-19 at Butner than at any…
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Two New Programs Could Be Crucial to Curbing Gun Violence in Charlotte
Lucille Puckett had already lost one son to gun violence in Charlotte, she wasn’t about to lose another. In September, her teenage son was jumped by a group of boys on the west side of Charlotte near their home, where her 26-year-old son was shot and killed in the front…
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Charlotte Teacher Finds a Friend in Joe Biden During Cancer Battle
When Pat Maholland learned he had incurable cancer, so many thoughts flashed through his mind at once. But one thing that never occurred to him is that he would receive hope, help and encouragement from an unexpected benefactor: presidential candidate Joe Biden. “Everything [was] a tumultuous change,” Maholland says. “In…
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Affordable Housing Advocates Demand City ‘Find a Way’ for New Brookhill Project
In the lead-up to this evening’s city council meeting, affordable-housing advocates are calling on city leaders to “find a way” to salvage plans that include more than 160 affordable units in the redevelopment of Brookhill Village after a recent rejection of funding requests have put those plans in peril. More…
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Voter Guide: What You Need to Know for the 2020 Elections
You may have heard that there’s a big election coming up, but there’s actually a ton of big elections coming up in 2020! While some of you have already cast your absentee ballots — nearly 48,000 Mecklenburg County residents had done so at the time of this writing — those…
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CMPD Releases Footage of Arrest that Led to Harold Easter’s Death
CMPD released hours of body-worn camera videos and department surveillance footage that show the events surrounding a January arrest that led to the death of Harold Easter and the resignations of four CMPD officers and a sergeant with the department. At a press conference on Thursday afternoon, CMPD Chief Johnny…
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Phase 3 of N.C. Reopening To Begin Friday. What Changes?
At a press conference this afternoon, N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper announced Phase 3 of the N.C. reopening plan will take effect on Friday at 5 p.m., allowing bars, movie theaters, outdoor entertainment venues and convention centers to begin reopening at 30% capacity. Here are some key changes included in Phase…
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English Learners at CMS Feel Disconnected During Virtual Schooling
Ruby Orduna knew the 2020-21 school year would be difficult for her two sons, both enrolled in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). As native Spanish speakers and English Learners (EL) in CMS, the two boys learn the language best through play, experience and social interaction. After March 13, those key learning components…
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A Movement Grows Outside of East Charlotte Abortion Clinic
The video begins with a 19-year-old woman relaxing in a lawn chair outside of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic on Latrobe Drive in east Charlotte where tensions between anti-abortion activists and pro-choice clinic defenders have risen in recent years. In the video, the 19-year-old clinic defender nonchalantly…
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$35 Million in Funding Sits Idle as North Carolina Nursing Homes Suffer
Federal regulators can fine North Carolina nursing homes upward of a half-million dollars when facilities go seriously wrong — as in the case of a Fayetteville resident who died after staff found her with fire ants covering her face and upper body. The deadly 2019 incident described in state records brought…
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Charlotte Mother Recounts Search for Son During Wrongful Incarceration
For a moment it seemed as if Chanel Sapp-Young’s 24-year-old son Brenden Eans had simply disappeared. After being arrested at work on a recent Friday afternoon, Eans spent five days in a South Carolina jail, now his mom is recounting her harrowing search for answers while her son was the…
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Black History of Charlotte Part 2: The Building of Brooklyn
The following is the second in a five-part history of Black culture in Charlotte, looking at the construction of Brooklyn, Charlotte’s most storied Black community. Read Part 1 here and stay tuned for the continuation of the series. For a stretch of time in the mid 1910s, anyone who took…
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