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Alabama

A woman wearing a hat stands next to a blue bucket

How a Vietnamese community emerged among the most vaccinated in Alabama

COVID-19

Many Vietnamese Americans in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, say they got vaccinated because they wanted to feel safer at work, making them among the most vaccinated communities in the state.

A Native American elder performs a ritual ceremony using a feather.

COVID-19 deaths among tribal elders threaten cultural loss

COVID-19
Activists dressed up as characters from "The Handmaid's Tale" are shown back lit from a low perspective.

The red cloak of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is becoming a symbol for reproductive rights

Alabama employs roughly 3,000 people working with farmed catfish. The domestic industry has been cut in about half over the past 15 years, primarily due to competition from Vietnam.

The great catfish war rages on

Economics
A man in a football jersey holds a trophy over his head as confetti rains down behind him.

Is Alabama’s football glory helping the university’s international brand?

Education
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Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama builds about 3,000 engines a day at its plant in Huntsville, powering one third of Toyota vehicles produced in North America.

How Alabama is becoming the auto capital of the South

Economics

Just 25 years ago, Alabama used to be a place for textiles. Now it’s a place to build cars.

Muscle Shoals Soul

Arts, Culture & Media

Several decades ago the small town of Muscle Shoals, Alabama became one of the most thrilling creative scenes for American soul music. Now a Philadelphia record producer is trying to recreate that scene, with the help of one of the men who made it all happen several decades ago.

Blind Boys of Alabama

Arts, Culture & Media

They got their start at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939. Sixty-nine years later, the band remains a gospel music institution. For their latest album, Down in New Orleans, the Blind Boys went to Louisiana for a new take on some classic spirituals. The group performs live in Studio 360 and Kurt […]

William Christenberry

Arts, Culture & Media

William Christenberry returns every year to Alabama to chronicle the slowly morphing rural landscape of his childhood: faded barns, kudzu-covered buildings, and a certain old barbecue joint. He explains how he avoids cliches while capturing familiar images of the South.

About that “Negro dialect”…

Arts, Culture & Media

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in political hot water this week for past remarks he made about President Obama’s race. According to the new book Game Change, Reid encouraged Obama’s run for the White House, in part, because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’ Long […]

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