The Promise

Nashville Public Radio

A Peabody Award-winning series from Nashville Public Radio about inequality and the people trying to rise above it, with host and reporter Meribah Knight. In Season 1 of The Promise, we told the story of Nashville's largest public housing complex, smack in the middle of a city on the rise. In Season 2, we explore how that divide reveals itself in the classroom. One neighborhood, two schools — one black and poor, the other white and well-off, and the kids stuck in the middle.

2018 Nashville Public Radio

13hr 11min

Here's a preview of the new special six-part series from Nashville Public Radio, where we take you inside Nashville's oldest and largest public housing project.

December 29, 20172min 25sec2.52 MB

A new 4-part series by Meribah Knight

June 17, 20243min 2sec4.39 MB

Thumbnail for "Bonus: Locked up and treated ‘like I’m a dog'".

A bonus interview from The Kids of Rutherford County

November 7, 20236min 4sec8.75 MB

What Tennessee Owes Its HBCU

December 9, 202552min 33sec75.68 MB

Episode 1 of WPLN’s new series “The Country In Our Hearts” is out now! We travel from a market in South Nashville to the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan to discover what happened on one terrible, pivotal day in 1988.

June 5, 20251min 30sec2.17 MB

A new podcast from Nashville Public Radio

February 5, 20242min 13sec3.21 MB

Thumbnail for "Bonus: How one police chief struggled to change the system".

Exclusive interview from The Kids of Rutherford County

November 26, 20236min 5sec8.78 MB

Thumbnail for "Dedicated Public Servants | The Kids of Rutherford County".

The lawsuit against Rutherford County comes to an end, but the hard part is getting everybody paid.

November 23, 202338min 42sec55.73 MB

Thumbnail for "Bonus: Rutherford County is not alone. This youth detention center superintendent in Knoxville illegally locks kids alone in cells.".

Juvenile injustice in Tennessee

November 19, 20239min 1sec12.99 MB

Thumbnail for "Bonus: Behind the music of The Kids of Rutherford County".

Meribah Knight discusses the musical scoring for The Kids of Rutherford County

November 17, 202317min 8sec24.69 MB

Thumbnail for "Would You Like to Sue the Government? | The Kids of Rutherford County".

Wes Clark reads a telling line in a police report that comes to reveal how Rutherford County’s juvenile justice system really works.

November 16, 20231hr86.73 MB

Thumbnail for "What the Hell Are You People Doing? | The Kids of Rutherford County".

A young lawyer named Wes Clark can’t get the Rutherford County juvenile court to let his clients out of detention— even when the law says they shouldn’t have been held in the first place.

November 9, 202333min 22sec48.05 MB

Thumbnail for "The Egregious Video | The Kids of Rutherford County".

11 kids in Rutherford County, TN are arrested for watching a fight. The arrests do not go smoothly.

October 26, 202327min 51sec40.13 MB

Thumbnail for "Coming Soon: The Kids of Rutherford County".

A new series by The New York Times and Serial Productions in partnership with ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio.

October 19, 20232min 19sec2.23 MB

In WPLN News' latest investigation, we'll holds up a mirror to see how officers treat their own. Episodes drop Sept. 29.

September 27, 20213min 58sec3.89 MB

At 61 years old, Vernell McHenry is like the grandmother of her corner of the James Cayce Homes.

January 24, 201823min 36sec22.66 MB

A husband, a father, a community leader, a showman — Big Man is a name everyone knows here. We follow him one afternoon as plans for a family barbecue are upended by a fatal shooting outside his apartment.

January 31, 201823min 11sec22.33 MB

The relationship between James Cayce residents and Nashville police is a tenuous one. In this episode, we explore two defining moments in Cayce: A viral cell phone video of a police officer being assaulted, and the most controversial police shooting in the city’s recent history. Both were caught on camera. And both reveal the strain between the people who live in Cayce and the people who patrol it.

February 7, 201829min 18sec28.13 MB

This is a story about the assumptions we all make. And the secrets we keep. With WPLN reporter Meribah Knight as the go-between, Big Man, a public housing resident from the Cayce Homes, walks across the street to meet the wealthy couple who live in the fancy new home on the hill. In many ways, their lives couldn’t be more different, but in breaking the silence between the two sides of the gentrifying neighborhood, a friendship begins to form — only to be dashed in a way no one could have expected.

February 14, 201833min 5sec31.77 MB

There is a saying in Nashville’s James Cayce Homes: “Get some gone.” Three simple words that describe the urge, the mission, to move out, to get away from the city’s oldest public housing project.

February 21, 201819min 42sec18.93 MB

Does this big idea to have low-income and higher income people living side-by-side really make a community better, safer, healthier?

March 14, 201825min 19sec24.31 MB

We return to the James Cayce Homes to follow up with residents amid the $600 million overhaul. But in checking back, we trip into some news.

April 27, 201828min 29sec27.42 MB

Thumbnail for "Bonus 2: The Big Man Interview".

If you've listened to The Promise, you no doubt remember Big Man. Meribah Knight interviews him live on stage.

November 15, 201814min 16sec13.9 MB

Ms. Vernell has another big decision to make: to stay in Cayce through the chaos of redevelopment, or to leave? Her conclusion reveals something about this long, messy process to overhaul Nashville’s public housing.

November 4, 201923min 4sec22.28 MB

This is a story about one school trying to stay afloat, a neighborhood divided over race and economics, and a city that’s resisted school desegregation every step of the way.

August 3, 20201min 56sec1.86 MB

It’s the start of the 2019 school year, and two elementary schools in Nashville are about to be at the center of a neighborhood battle over the resegregation of schools.

August 31, 202030min 17sec29.28 MB

In this episode, we’re going back to the early days of this battle for racial equity in the classroom, to the time not that long ago when school desegregation literally blew this city apart.

September 7, 202045min 23sec43.7 MB

After 43 years of courtroom battles, Nashville's landmark school desegregation lawsuit was settled. In the eyes of the law, the city finally made an honest effort to racially integrate its schools. But in truth, the matter was far from settled.

September 14, 202029min 55sec28.86 MB

In a neighborhood with tons of Black families, Willie Sims’ daughter was the only Black child in the kindergarten class of one East Nashville elementary school. Then he started hearing murmurings from other families, white families. They were mobilizing against resegregation. Did he want in?

September 21, 202037min 11sec35.84 MB

Warner Elementary is about to turn itself around. It finally has all the right tools to be successful — an infusion of cash, an energetic principal. But will white families choose to send their children there?

September 28, 202036min 12sec34.89 MB

Last fall, parents from Lockeland Elementary met to talk about the elephant in the room: Their school was now the whitest school in the entire district. But not that long ago, an idea was floated that could have changed the makeup of Lockeland’s student body — and it did not go well.

October 5, 202045min 8sec43.46 MB

There was a time when the decision of where to send your child to school was relatively simple: public or private. Now, those choices have multiplied — and the resulting system of school choice hasn't solved the inequalities at play.

October 12, 202026min 28sec25.55 MB

It’s February 2020, and Warner Elementary is rising from one of the lowest performing schools in Tennessee to one of the best. But we all know what happens next. And at a school with mostly low-income students, the challenges of a global pandemic hit especially hard.

October 19, 202051min 47sec49.85 MB

Bonus: Locked up and treated ‘like I’m a dog'

November 7, 20236min 4sec

Quinterrius Frazier was 15 years old when he was arrested for aggravated robbery and held in the Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Center. When staff said he was being disruptive — flashing gang signs and rapping, they claimed — he was placed in solitary confinement.

It’s been almost seven years now, and Quinterrius still feels the effects of being locked up in a cell for 23 hours a day — he has trouble with small spaces, and he needs constant stimulation. Trauma has a way of lingering like that.