If you believe in the Church of Baseball, you may soon meet some fellow worshipers at the Historic Durham Athletic Park. This weekend, April 27-29, the Bull City will play host to the Third Annual Sandlot Revival, an event that draws teams from as far as New York and New Orleans.  The event—which includes casual baseball camaraderie alongside some beer-slinging and barbecue-eating, with fare from Lawrence BBQ—is fundraising for the Long Ball Program, a nonprofit that helps local youth through baseball and academic coaching. Ahead of the event—alongside images by photographer Alex Boerner ..read more

The commute from downtown Durham to the site of Bull City’s newest farmers’ market is about a 10-minute drive. A few minutes after crossing over I-85, you’ll find yourself navigating windy, two-lane roads dotted with the occasional small business or church before turning into Helena Bragg and Sylvia Williams’ property. “This is Soul Sanctuary,” says Williams. “It’s land that we bought so we could share it with the community. We have this nice event space here and we have this nice land for people to use. What we knew was that there were farmers’ markets around, but there wasn’t really anythin ..read more

LeVelle Moton is a staple of Southeast Raleigh’s Idlewild community, one of the first neighborhoods in the city in which former slaves were permitted to buy homes.  The acclaimed head coach of North Carolina Central University’s men’s basketball team was raised there in the housing projects with his single mother, Hattie McDougald, and in 2022, the neighborhood park was named in Moton’s honor. LeVelle Moton Credit: Photo from Wikipedia Now, Moton and Idlewild are both making history again for a new, innovative development that seeks to address the economic and systemic issues of homeowne ..read more

This story originally published online at NC Newsline. Members of encampment packed belongings in borrowed shopping carts. (Photo: Greg Childress) Hoping to avoid an encounter with Raleigh police, many of the more than 40 people living in a tent encampment on U.S. 70 left ahead of the 10 a.m. deadline they’d been given to vacate or face arrest for trespassing. Nearly two hours after the deadline passed, police had not arrived in order to force people to leave. Two officers did show up Tuesday afternoon, advocates for the people living there reported, but were not part of the forced ..read more

Two weeks ago, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam submitted a letter to the editor in response to the INDY‘s reporting on Congresswoman Valerie Foushee’s trip to Israel to meet with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Allam, as we noted, ran against Foushee for the NC District 4 congressional seat in 2022. Several readers submitted responses to Allam’s letter. We’re publishing a few of them here. From reader Edward C. Halperin in Chapel Hill: Commissioner Allam, Where is your conscience? In an April 9, 2024 Letter to the Editor, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam  ..read more

This story originally published online at NC Newsline. More than 40 people living in a tent encampment on a state-owned, unused lot at the intersection of Highways 401 and U.S. 70 near the Raleigh-Garner border were told to leave by 10 a.m. Tuesday or face arrest for trespassing. Advocates for the people in the encampment called a 9 a.m. press conference Tuesday to bring attention to what they are calling an “act of unmitigated cruelty,” coming as it does during the National Week of Action to Oppose the Criminalization of Homelessness.  Patrick O’Neill (Photo: Kings Bay Plowshares 7) “Th ..read more

When Kara Hess asked for a show of hands from returning attendees at the Emerging Women in Sports Leadership Summit (EWSLS) in late March, only a few signaled their return. The Durham Convention Center was packed to the brim with young women sporting business casual attire and Nike dunks, but most were newcomers to the newish summit. Co-hosted by the Durham Sports Commission (DSC) and Women Leaders in Sports, the EWSLS gave attendees the opportunity to network within a quickly-growing industry. Hess, the deputy director of leadership development and events at Women Leaders in Sports, kicked o ..read more

For 24 years, Diana Huerta has been the only member of her family living in the United States. The rest, still in Mexico, are in touch often, but talking to them on the phone doesn’t cure the anxiety and depression she feels from being isolated in a primarily English-speaking area. Huerta tried to get on the waitlist for the only bilingual therapy clinic in Orange County, El Futuro, but there was always too much demand. Then the Carrboro location shut its doors in 2015 and she lost hope, turning to virtual sessions with a therapist in Colombia just so she could speak with someone who understa ..read more

On a cool evening last Friday, Durham’s CCB plaza swelled with members of North Carolina’s creative community; the four elements of hip-hop all present. Dozens of emcees, DJs, breakdancers, and graffiti artists were gathered to rap, cry, dance, laugh, sing, pray, and grieve together. We were mourning the passing of our brother Kevin Joshua Rowsey II, known to many in our beloved community as Rcherowdy, who passed on Wednesday, April 17. He was 32.  Precisely at 9:19 PM on April 19th, Rowdy’s mentee and protégé JAMM (aka Just Another Master Musician) passionately called out: “CYPHER, CYPH ..read more

If March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, there’s a similar simile from the natural world to be made for April of this year, at least for those of us in the central and eastern United States.  This month came in with a stunning rare solar eclipse, and it will go out with a buzz from the emergence of trillions of periodic cicadas, another rare occurrence in which two broods will surface from under the ground at the same time. It’s an event we haven’t seen in 200 years, and here in the United States we won’t see another total solar eclipse again until 2044. The infrequency of thes ..read more