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“It smells bad. It gets in your hair, and if you don't wash your hair every day, just that odor stays in your hair for the whole week.”

Cecilia Rice
Owner, The Nut Shop
           
Five tons of popcorn?

Please find attached, Alabama Public Radio’s entry for Best Student Feature Report, “What’s popping at Bryant-Denny Stadium?”

Home college football games at the University of Alabama involve logistics. Fans have to park around campus and find their seats. The teams use buses to make their way to Bryant-Denny Stadium. And, then there’s the food for the one hundred thousand fans. Cheering burns calories and that means trips to the concession stands for stadium dogs and nachos. APR newsroom student intern Emily Aheard reports on the family owned business that handles one crunchy item on the menu.

Please click here to listen to the feature...
https://www.apr.org/news/2025-11-13/whats-popping-at-bryant-denny-stadium

Ahearn visited The Nut Shop in Tuscaloosa, on “popping day.” The work began with the arrival of a ton of unpopped kernels on a delivery truck bound for the “popping room.” The Nut Shop arranged to supply five tons of popcorn, per season, for Crimson Tide home games. This isn’t the only example of one supplier getting a corner on the snack market at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Ahearn also interviewed Laura McLaughlin, who produced the “Bear Bryant Show,” sponsored by Golden Flake potato chips.

Respectfully submitted,

“They claim that everyone is created equal, but they don't treat people equally. And that, I think, is the way we've, at least I've been educated about like the civil rights,”

Benjamin Lundgal
University of Southern Denmark


Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Series, titled “…a death, a bridge, and a seat on the bus.” The Alabama Public Radio spent eleven months investigating the "behind the scenes" stories of three critical anniversaries in the state’s civil rights history.

The APR news team produced this project without a budget.

Please click here to listen to the program.
https://www.apr.org/news/2025-12-12/a-death-a-bridge-and-a-seat-on-the-bus-an-apr-news-special

2025 marked sixty years since civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot twice by an Alabama State Trooper on February 18, 1965. APR listeners heard from eighty-eight-year-old Vera Jenkins-Booker, the nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital who was with Jackson for the eight days before he died.

His death sparked voting rights marchers to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where police on horseback attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas. The incident became known as “bloody Sunday.” Most of the marchers captured in black and white film that day appeared to be adults, but many of the protesters were teenagers. APR Gulf coast correspondent Lynn Oldshue spoke with Jeanette Howard-Moore and Diane Harris, who were school students caught up in the attack.

Americans aren’t the only ones studying events like “bloody Sunday,” the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the work of Rosa Parks and Doctor Martin Luther King. Junior. Europeans are watching, too. APR correspondent James Niiler covers stories for us from his hometown of Arhus, Denmark that have impact in Alabama. He assembled a focus group of five students majoring in American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark to hear their frank assessment of Alabama’s civil rights record.

2025 is also the seventieth anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rosa Parks, who sparked the event in 1955, is familiar to Danish young people. But, there’s more to her story that refusing to give up her seat to a white bus passenger. APR Gulf coast correspondent Cori Yonge visited the Rosa Parks Museum where an effort is under to tell the story of the civil rights icon, and to lobby the Library of Congress to relocate materials related to Parks to the city where the boycott took place.

Our program wraps up with remembrances from two people on the “front lines” of the boycott that helped make Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior an international figure. APR student reporter Torin Daniel used never-before-heard archival audio from 2018 interviews with Fred Gray and Nelson Malden. Gray was the attorney to Dr. King and Rosa Parks, and Malden was MLK’s barber. Gray recalls the planning process that went into the boycott and how King was the last of three names under consideration to lead the effort. Malden remembered the day, from the window of his barber, the day the boycott began.

Respectfully submitted.

Alabama voters headed to the polls in November for the 2022 midterms. One issue on the ballot was abolishing slavery in the state 157 years after Congress outlawed the practice nationally. Even a “yes” vote in Alabama won’t erase one lasting impact of the slave trade before the U.S. Civil War

““Knowing this cemetery is there, and it is just dwindling away, it’s just being washed away.  It’s just thrown away. It’s like taking my grandfather, my great grandfather, or father or my mother and knowing that they’re buried there, and just trashing them,” said Patricia Kemp of Tuscaloosa.

Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Radio, titled “No Stone Unturned: Preserving Slave Cemeteries in Alabama.”

Please click here to listen to the program

https://www.apr.org/award-entries/2022-11-24/no-stone-unturned-preserving-slave-cemeteries-in-alabama-an-apr-news-documentary

Following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, an estimated 435,000 slaves in Alabama were freed. Many of these people remained in the state to live out their lives. Their descendants now say they can’t find the burial sites of their ancestors and these cemeteries are slowly disappearing. Some are lost to neglect while others are being paved over by developers.

Alabama Public Radio spent nine months, with no budget, investigating the effort to find and preserve slave burial grounds in the state. We heard from the families of some of these kidnapped Africans. They say the system that reduced their great-great grandparents to nameless property creates the nearly impossible job of tracing their family roots. That’s a situation not shared by their white neighbors.

We started with forty unmarked graves.

APR began its search at a two acre spot known as the “Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery,” set up by plantation owner John Welch Prewitt in Northport, near Tuscaloosa. Only a handful of tombstones and faded burial markers remains. The news team invited Len Strozier of Omega Mapping Services in Fortson, Georgia to scan Old Prewitt with ground penetrating radar. He found an unmarked grave within a minute, and a total of forty within an half hour.

When someone moves into a new home, neighbors comes by with cakes or pies. Former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Deontay Wilder heard stories. His new home sits next door to the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery. In Wilder’s first ever interview on the subject, he told APR of his impressions upon visiting the burial yard for the first time.

“To understand and know where you are, and what you’re setting your feet on, and what occurred in certain times of the years, that you don’t know nothing about,” Wilder told APR.

Our next stop was the twentieth anniversary workshop of the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance. That’s where we met Olley Ballard, a retired magnet school principal in Huntsville, one of only two African Americans in the crowd. She was searching for clues to the burial site of her great-great grandfather who was enslaved in 1842. The workshop focused on issues like cleaning tombstones and repairing cemetery gates. Ballard’s great great grandfather has neither. She’s not even sure where he’s buried.

Ballard is concerned the city of Huntsville built a parking deck on her ancestor's burial site.

APR listeners heard about the obstacles African Americans experience when tracing their ancestry or preserving those graves. Congress may offer help. The U.S. House and Senate are working on a bill called the African American Burial Ground Preservation Act. We spoke with Alabama Democratic Representative Terri Sewell, a co-sponsor of the measure which has languished in committee for three years.

The situation of preserving slave cemeteries isn’t limited to the south.

APR traveled to Bridgewater Township in New Jersey. Efforts are underway to save the Prince Rodgers Slave Cemetery, which is nestled between two suburban homes. Black New Jersey residents are often angered when they learn, some for the first time, that eleven thousand Africans were enslaved in the Garden State at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

APR concluded its investigation with a frank discussion on the difficulties of dealing with slave cemeteries and the impact of enslavement, when both white and black people both appear unwilling to openly discuss racial issues, including slavery.

Respectfully submitted,

Alabama voters headed to the polls in November for the 2022 midterms. One issue on the ballot was abolishing slavery in the state 157 years after Congress outlawed the practice nationally. Even a “yes” vote in Alabama won’t erase one lasting impact of the slave trade before the U.S. Civil War

“Knowing this cemetery is there, and it is just dwindling away, it’s just being washed away.  It’s just thrown away. It’s like taking my grandfather, my great grandfather, or father or my mother and knowing that they’re buried there, and just trashing them,” said Patricia Kemp of Tuscaloosa.

Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Audio, titled “No Stone Unturned: Preserving Slave Cemeteries in Alabama.”

Please click here to listen to the program

https://www.apr.org/award-entries/2022-11-24/no-stone-unturned-preserving-slave-cemeteries-in-alabama-an-apr-news-documentary

Following the passage of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, an estimated 435,000 slaves in Alabama were freed. Many of these people remained in the state to live out their lives. Their descendants now say they can’t find the burial sites of their ancestors and these cemeteries are slowly disappearing. Some are lost to neglect while others are being paved over by developers.

Alabama Public Radio spent nine months, with no budget, investigating the effort to find and preserve slave burial grounds in the state. We heard from the families of some of these kidnapped Africans. They say the system that reduced their great-great grandparents to nameless property creates the nearly impossible job of tracing their family roots. That’s a situation not shared by their white neighbors.

We started with forty unmarked graves.

APR began its search at a two acre spot known as the “Old Prewett Slave Cemetery,” set up by plantation owner John Welch Prewett in Northport, near Tuscaloosa. Only a handful of tombstones and faded burial markers remains. The news team invited Len Strozier of Omega Mapping Services in Fortson, Georgia to scan Old Prewett with ground penetrating radar.

He found an unmarked grave within a minute, and a total of forty within an half hour.

When someone moves into a new home, neighbors comes by with cakes or pies. Former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Deontay Wilder heard stories. His new home sits next door to the Old Prewett Slave Cemetery. In Wilder’s first ever interview on the subject, he told APR of his impressions upon visiting the burial yard for the first time.

“To understand and know where you are, and what you’re setting your feet on, and what occurred in certain times of the years, that you don’t know nothing about,” Wilder told APR.

Our next stop was the twentieth anniversary workshop of the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance. That’s where we met Olley Ballard, a retired magnet school principal in Huntsville, one of only two African Americans in the crowd. She was searching for clues to the burial site of her great-great grandfather who was enslaved in 1842. The workshop focused on issues like cleaning tombstones and repairing cemetery gates. Ballard’s great great grandfather has neither. She’s not even sure where he’s buried.

Ballard is concerned the city of Huntsville built a parking deck on her ancestor's burial site.

APR listeners heard about the obstacles African Americans experience when tracing their ancestry or preserving those graves. Congress may offer help. The U.S. House and Senate are working on a bill called the African American Burial Ground Preservation Act. We spoke with Alabama Democratic Representative Terri Sewell, a co-sponsor of the measure which has languished in committee for three years.

The situation of preserving slave cemeteries isn’t limited to the south.

APR traveled to Bridgewater Township in New Jersey. Efforts are underway to save the Prince Rodgers Slave Cemetery, which is nestled between two suburban homes. African American residents of New Jersey are often angered when they learn, some for the first time, that eleven thousand people were enslaved in the Garden State at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

APR concluded its investigation with a frank discussion on the difficulties of dealing with slave cemeteries and the impact of enslavement when people, both white and African American, appear unwilling to openly discuss racial issues, including slavery.

Alabama voters headed to the polls in November for the 2022 midterms. One issue on the ballot was abolishing slavery in the state 157 years after Congress outlawed the practice nationally. Even a “yes” vote in Alabama won’t erase one lasting impact of the slave trade before the U.S. Civil War

““Knowing this cemetery is there, and it is just dwindling away, it’s just being washed away.  It’s just thrown away. It’s like taking my grandfather, my great grandfather, or father or my mother and knowing that they’re buried there, and just trashing them,” said Patricia Kemp of Tuscaloosa.

Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the 2022 Media for a Just Society Award for Radio, titled “No Stone Unturned: Preserving Slave Cemeteries in Alabama.”

Please click here to listen to the program…

https://www.apr.org/award-entries/2022-11-24/no-stone-unturned-preserving-slave-cemeteries-in-alabama-an-apr-news-documentary

Following the passage of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, an estimated 435,000 slaves in Alabama were freed. Many of these people remained in the state to live out their lives. Their descendants now say they can’t find the burial sites of their ancestors and these cemeteries are slowly disappearing. Some are lost to neglect while others are being paved over by developers.

Alabama Public Radio spent nine months, with no budget, investigating the effort to find and preserve slave burial grounds in the state. We heard from the families of some of these kidnapped Africans. They say the system that reduced their great-great grandparents to nameless property creates the nearly impossible job of tracing their family roots. That’s a situation not shared by their white neighbors.

We started with forty unknown, and unmarked, graves.

APR began its search at a two acre spot known as the “Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery,” set up by plantation owner John Welch Prewitt in Northport, near Tuscaloosa. Only a handful of tombstones and faded burial markers remains. The news team invited Len Strozier of Omega Mapping Services in Fortson, Georgia to scan Old Prewitt with ground penetrating radar. He found an unmarked grave within a minute, and a total of forty within an half hour.

A two hundred year old cemetery may not sound relevant to modern day Americans, but former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Deontay Wilder might differ with that. His home in Northport sits next door to the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery. In Wilder’s first ever interview on the subject, he told APR of his impressions upon visiting the burial yard for the first time.

“To understand and know where you are, and what you’re setting your feet on, and what occurred in certain times of the years, that you don’t know nothing about,” Wilder told APR.

Our next stop was the twentieth anniversary workshop of the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance. That’s where we met Olley Ballard, a retired magnet school principal in Huntsville, one of only two African Americans in the crowd. She was searching for clues to the burial site of her great-great grandfather who was enslaved in 1842. The workshop focused on issues like cleaning tombstones and repairing cemetery gates. Ballard’s great great grandfather has neither. She’s not even sure where he’s buried. This punctuates the obstacles African Americans experience when tracing their ancestry or preserving those graves.

Congress may be ready to offer help. The U.S. House and Senate are working on a bill called the African American Burial Ground Preservation Act. We spoke with Alabama Democratic Representative Terri Sewell, a co-sponsor of the measure which has languished in committee for three years.

The situation of preserving slave cemeteries isn’t limited to the south.

APR traveled to Bridgewater Township in New Jersey. Efforts are underway to save the Prince Rodgers Slave Cemetery, which is nestled between two suburban homes. African American residents of New Jersey are often angered when they learn, some for the first time, that eleven thousand Africans were enslaved in the Garden State at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

APR concluded its investigation with a frank discussion on the difficulties of dealing with slave cemeteries and the impact of enslavement when people, both white and African American, both appear unwilling to openly discuss racial issues, including slavery.

Respectfully submitted,

Alabama voters headed to the polls in November for the 2022 midterms. One issue on the ballot was abolishing slavery in the state 157 years after Congress outlawed the practice nationally. Even a “yes” vote in Alabama won’t erase one lasting impact of the slave trade before the U.S. Civil War

““Knowing this cemetery is there, and it is just dwindling away, it’s just being washed away.  It’s just thrown away. It’s like taking my grandfather, my great grandfather, or father or my mother and knowing that they’re buried there, and just trashing them,” said Patricia Kemp of Tuscaloosa.

Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the 2022 Peabody Award for Radio, titled “No Stone Unturned: Preserving Slave Cemeteries in Alabama.”

Please click here to listen to the program…

https://www.apr.org/award-entries/2022-11-24/no-stone-unturned-preserving-slave-cemeteries-in-alabama-an-apr-news-documentary

Following the passage of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, an estimated 435,000 slaves in Alabama were freed. Many of these people remained in the state to live out their lives. Their descendants now say they can’t find the burial sites of their ancestors and these cemeteries are slowly disappearing. Some are lost to neglect while others are being paved over by developers.

Alabama Public Radio spent nine months, with no budget, investigating the effort to find and preserve slave burial grounds in the state. We heard from the families of some of these kidnapped Africans. They say the system that reduced their great-great grandparents to nameless property creates the nearly impossible job of tracing their family roots. That’s a situation not shared by their white neighbors.

We started with forty unknown, and unmarked, graves.

APR began its search at a two acre spot known as the “Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery,” set up by plantation owner John Welch Prewitt in Northport, near Tuscaloosa. Only a handful of tombstones and faded burial markers remains. The news team invited Len Strozier of Omega Mapping Services in Fortson, Georgia to scan Old Prewitt with ground penetrating radar. He found an unmarked grave within a minute, and a total of forty within an half hour.

A two hundred year old cemetery may not sound relevant to modern day Americans, but former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Deontay Wilder might differ with that. His home in Northport sits next door to the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery. In Wilder’s first ever interview on the subject, he told APR of his impressions upon visiting the burial yard for the first time.

“To understand and know where you are, and what you’re setting your feet on, and what occurred in certain times of the years, that you don’t know nothing about,” Wilder told APR.

Our next stop was the twentieth anniversary workshop of the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance. That’s where we met Olley Ballard, a retired magnet school principal in Huntsville, one of only two African Americans in the crowd. She was searching for clues to the burial site of her great-great grandfather who was enslaved in 1842. The workshop focused on issues like cleaning tombstones and repairing cemetery gates. Ballard’s great great grandfather has neither. She’s not even sure where he’s buried. This punctuates the obstacles African Americans experience when tracing their ancestry or preserving those graves.

Congress may be ready to offer help. The U.S. House and Senate are working on a bill called the African American Burial Ground Preservation Act. We spoke with Alabama Democratic Representative Terri Sewell is a co-sponsor of the measure which has languished in committee for three years.

The situation of preserving slave cemeteries isn’t limited to the south.

APR traveled to Bridgewater Township in New Jersey. Efforts are underway to save the Prince Rodgers Slave Cemetery, which is nestled between two suburban homes. African American residents of New Jersey are often angered when they learn, some for the first time, that eleven thousand Africans were enslaved in the Garden State at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

APR concluded its investigation with a frank discussion on the difficulties of dealing with slave cemeteries and the impact of enslavement when people, both white and African American, both appear unwilling to openly discuss racial issues, including slavery.

Respectfully submitted,

Alabama voters headed to the polls in November for the 2022 midterms. One issue on the ballot was abolishing slavery in the state 157 years after Congress outlawed the practice nationally. Even a “yes” vote in Alabama won’t erase one lasting impact of the slave trade before the U.S. Civil War

““Knowing this cemetery is there, and it is just dwindling away, it’s just being washed away.  It’s just thrown away. It’s like taking my grandfather, my great grandfather, or father or my mother and knowing that they’re buried there, and just trashing them,” said Patricia Kemp of Tuscaloosa.

Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the 2022 NABJ Salute to Excellence Award for best documentary, titled “No Stone Unturned: Preserving Slave Cemeteries in Alabama.”

We began with forty unknown graves.

Please click here to listen to the program

https://www.apr.org/award-entries/2022-11-24/no-stone-unturned-preserving-slave-cemeteries-in-alabama-an-apr-news-documentary

Following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, an estimated 435,000 slaves in Alabama were freed. Many of these people remained in the state to live out their lives. Their descendants now say they can’t find the burial sites of their ancestors and these cemeteries are slowly disappearing. Some are lost to neglect while others are being paved over by developers.

Alabama Public Radio spent nine months, with no budget, investigating the effort to find and preserve slave burial grounds in the state. We heard from the families of some of these kidnapped Africans. They say the system that reduced their great-great grandparents to nameless property creates the nearly impossible job of tracing their family roots. That’s a situation not shared by their white neighbors.

We started with forty unmarked graves.

APR began its search at a two acre spot known as the “Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery,” set up by plantation owner John Welch Prewitt in Northport, near Tuscaloosa. Only a handful of tombstones and faded burial markers remains. The news team invited Len Strozier of Omega Mapping Services in Fortson, Georgia to scan Old Prewitt with ground penetrating radar. He found an unmarked grave within a minute, and a total of forty within an half hour.

When someone moves into a new home, neighbors comes by with cakes or pies. Former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Deontay Wilder heard stories. His new home sits next door to the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery. In Wilder’s first ever interview on the subject, he told APR of his impressions upon visiting the burial yard for the first time.

“To understand and know where you are, and what you’re setting your feet on, and what occurred in certain times of the years, that you don’t know nothing about,” Wilder told APR.

Our next stop was the twentieth anniversary workshop of the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance. That’s where we met Olley Ballard, a retired magnet school principal in Huntsville, one of only two African Americans in the crowd. She was searching for clues to the burial site of her great-great grandfather who was enslaved in 1842. The workshop focused on issues like cleaning tombstones and repairing cemetery gates. Ballard’s great great grandfather has neither. She’s not even sure where he’s buried.

Ballard is concerned the city of Huntsville built a parking deck on her ancestor's burial site.

APR listeners heard about the obstacles African Americans experience when tracing their ancestry or preserving those graves. Congress may offer help. The U.S. House and Senate are working on a bill called the African American Burial Ground Preservation Act. We spoke with Alabama Democratic Representative Terri Sewell, a co-sponsor of the measure which has languished in committee for three years.

The situation of preserving slave cemeteries isn’t limited to the south.

APR traveled to Bridgewater Township in New Jersey. Efforts are underway to save the Prince Rodgers Slave Cemetery, which is nestled between two suburban homes. Black New Jersey residents are often angered when they learn, some for the first time, that eleven thousand Africans were enslaved in the Garden State at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

APR concluded its investigation with a frank discussion on the difficulties of dealing with slave cemeteries and the impact of enslavement, when both white and black people both appear unwilling to openly discuss racial issues, including slavery.

Respectfully submitted,