We are absolutely thrilled to announce that State of the Re:Union, in partnership with independent producer Lu Olkowski, has won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for “As Black As We Wish to Be.”

You can see the full list of winners here. We are proud to be listed alongside major news organizations like CNN Radio, CBS Radio News, ABC News Radio, Public Radio International, NPR.org, as well as public radio stations like WLRN, WBEZ and KQED.

Lu and Al plan their route. Photo by Lloyd Cederstrand.

Lu is an independent producer who came to us with an audio documentary that she had been working on for almost a year – the story of a tiny town in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio where residents have shared the bond of identifying as African-American despite the fact that they look white.

This partnership was also honored with an RTDNA/UNITY Award which recognizes organizations for their commitment to covering the cultural diversity of communities they serve. It has additionally picked up a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and a Gracie Award in the outstanding documentary category.

If you haven’t heard the episode, you can listen to it below:

Also be sure to check out our pictures from Pike County, while Lu and Al were on the road.

This episode was sponsored by the Ohio’s Hill Country Heritage Area and made possible with funding from the Ohio Humanities Council.

Team Semper Fi

More than two million veterans have come home so far from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  For returning veterans, reintegrating into society can be a challenge.   How do you find your place, when you’ve changed and the people you love don’t recognize you? When that old life is gone and you have to start a new one from scratch.  In this hour State of the Re:Union explores reintegration and asks the question: how do you come back home from war?

For more information on, visit our episode page for photos, links and music information.

And keep up with the latest SOTRU releases and events on Soundcloud, iTunes, Facebook and Twitter.

Photo Credit: Lloyd Cederstrand

In this episode Al Letson and guest producer Lu Olkowski visit a tiny town in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio where, for a century, residents have shared the common bond of identifying as African-American despite the fact that they look white. Racial lines have been blurred to invisibility, and people inside the same family can vehemently disagree about whether they are black or white. It can be tense and confusing. As a result, everyone’s choosing: Am I black? Am I mixed race? Or, am I white?

For more information on “As Black As We Wish to Be” visit our episode page for photos, links and music information.

And keep up with the latest SOTRU releases and events on Soundcloud, iTunes, Facebook and Twitter.

Listen to the Broadcast on WJCT’s On Demand Page

Host Al Letson and WJCT's Karen Feagins in studio with Luther Delp.

We’ve had a few people ask us about the live broadcast of our Jacksonville episode on WJCT so we wanted to post it in case you missed some or all of it.

If you head over WJCT’s on demand page and click Listen you can hear the entire two hours with host Al Letson and WJCT’s Karen Feagins.

And if you want more information about any of the organizations featured in the show, check out the links below:

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• Save the St. Johns River Ferry
• Save Mayport Fishing Village
• Jumping Fish: Advocating for Our Waterways through Athletics
• Veterans Farm
• Brooks Adaptive Sports and Recreation

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Photo Source: Jonathan Zander from Wikimedia Commons

Jacksonville, Florida is a lot of things: a military town. A church town. A beach town. And it can be all those things because Jacksonville is the largest city in the whole country: 841 acres of sprawl, highways, and strip malls dotted with tiny, unique neighborhoods. How does a place this huge and diverse lurch forward to keep pace with the rest of the country? The quick answer: often, it doesn’t. But once in a while, in small surprising ways, this place can be an incubator for innovation. In host Al Letson’s hometown episode, SOTRU asks: is Jacksonville is moving backward, stuck in neutral, or shifting towards progress?

For more information on “Grinding the Gears,” visit our episode page for photos, links and music information.

And keep up with the latest SOTRU releases and events on Soundcloud, iTunes, Facebook and Twitter.

Courtesy: Bob Torrez. All rights reserved.

Tucson sits in the borderlands, the desert landscape where America and Mexico meet. This place is crisscrossed by boundaries, visible and invisible—from the US border wall that cuts the Sonoran desert in half, to live-wire political divides in Tucson itself. In this episode, we tell stories about what happens when people cross borders, risking their lives and their reputations to take a chance on the other side

For more information on Borderlands, visit our episode page for photos, links and music information.