In the first decades of the 20th century, desegregation seemed like a distant dream. Bombings, lynchings, and other acts of brutal racist violence were all too common, and schools and other public spaces were largely segregated by race. Yet deep in the coal mines of West Virginia, an integrated militia of coal miners was forming, and they had little in common except for their enemy: oppressive coal barons. White hill folk, European immigrants, and African Americans were fed up with life-threatening working conditions, terrible wages, crushing debt, and corrupt mine operators. They were the original rednecks, and their interracial coalition was ahead of its time.

In this episode of The African American Folklorist, I speak with Dr. Tyler Parry, author of the book "Jumping The Broom - The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual."

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak recently issued a request that Nevadans stay home and read books. OK, he really just asked us all to stay home to combat the surging coronavirus. But we might as well make the best of it by reading some great new books. Here’s the latest batch of Nevada-related selection, ready to carry you through the lockdown. What else were you gonna do, make sourdough bread?

8 News Now is taking a look at the civil unrest in Las Vegas, from after the Rodney King verdict in 1992, to the 2020 protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

In Part 1, diverse experts and students discuss the history and root causes of racial disparities in education.

Race does play a role in health care.

It was July 26, 1964. The article on page 26 of The Indianapolis Star’s Sunday newspaper would have been easy to miss.

Kenadie Cobbin-Richardson, executive director of West Side redevelopment nonprofit Nevada Partners, and Tyler Parry, UNLV assistant professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, have ideas about how to fix Southern Nevada’s affordable housing problem. But — and this is a big but — none of them will work, at least not on their own. Like most forms of inequality, the housing injustice that leads people of color and poor and marginalized populations to be segregated in bad neighborhoods with substandard dwellings doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s part of a larger complex of oppression. In less than an hour, Cobbin Richardson and Parry touched on education inequity, mass incarceration, public transportation, rent control, student loan debt, and voting rights. And they were just getting started.