Reckon Radio
by Reckon
Panther: Blueprint for Black Power is the story of the unexpected birthplace of the Black Panther, a site that changed the course of the nation. But it’s not where you might expect. Far from Oakland, the Black Panther and its principles came from just outside Selma, Alabama. Lowndes County, Alabama: a county where every single thing Black folks did was an act of rebellion. A county where an all-Black party made it to the ballot in the year 1966. A county that paved the way for revolution. The fourth season of the Murrow Award-winning Reckon Radio examines the first year the Voting Rights Act was put to the test, deep in the heart of the Jim Crow South. Pulitzer Prize finalist Roy S. Johnson and journalist Eunice Elliott tell the story of Lowndes County and the election that shaped politics - and activism - as we know it.
Episodes
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S4E6: How Movements Make Us Taller, featuring DeJuana Thompson & TN Rep. Justin J. Pearson
In the final episode, Woke Vote founder and Birmingham Civil Rights Institute President, DeJuana Thompson, and Tennessee State Rep Justin J. Pearson sit down with hosts Eunice Elliott and Roy S. Johnson. The four discuss the status of the movement for Black Power today—what's changed, what hasn’t...
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S4E5: The Black Panthers' Blueprint for Change
Election Day for the Lowndes County Freedom Organization’s candidates didn’t go the way they wanted. But their party’s work - and its mascot the Black Panther - has rippled down through the years and across the country. To show what the Lowndes County Freedom Organization means today, journalists...
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S4E4: The Peril of a Black Party on the Ballot
How will the first election with an all-Black party end? It’s Election Day, 1966, and the Voting Rights Act is being put to the test. The Lowndes County Freedom Organization’s candidates have canvassed, campaigned and called on Black voters to show up to the polls for the Black Panther - at no...
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S4E3: Don't Back a Panther into a Corner
What did the Lowndes County movement look like? Everything Black folks did was an act of rebellion—it wasn’t just door knocking and registering to vote. Plus the story of how the Black Panther symbol was born.
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S4E2: “Bloody Lowndes” - The County that Changed the Nation
How did a county known as “Bloody Lowndes” become the birthplace of the Black Panther? Because the people of Lowndes met vicious, racist violence with a powerful response.
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S4E1: Between Selma and Montgomery, a Black Panther is Born
It’s a story we think we know well. It’s 1965, and the Civil Rights Movement is in full swing. Thousands are marching on Montgomery, protesting the treatment of Black Americans. But what about the people who lived alongside that road? The people who remained after the national cameras and big…
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Introducing 'Panther: Blueprint for Black Power'
This is the story of the surprising roots of the Black Panther and the election when America truly became a democracy.
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S3E6: Point 14
The killing of Bonita Carter in 1979 changed Birmingham, and its leadership. Protests following her death forced the city to reshape its police department, four decades before Black Lives Matter made its greatest impact. It was a decade after Black civil rights leaders had gathered in Birmingham…
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S3E5: "Shoot her again"
Who is Officer George Sands? The Birmingham police officer had amassed more than a dozen complaints before fatally shooting Bonita Carter. He’d been seen as a problem by some city leaders, while others protected him – saying he was just a symptom of a poorly trained police department rather than…
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S3E4: Catching the Devil on All Sides
The status quo was broken in Birmingham, Alabama, in the weeks after the Bonita Carter killing. The city once known as Bombingham, as the Johannesburg of the South, reeled from protests, and counter-protests from the Ku Klux Klan. A scientist, a former college dean named Richard Arrington who had...
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S3E3: The Shoebox
What was it about the killing of Bonita Carter that sparked police reform? The search for that answer led the Reckon Radio team into the bowels of the Birmingham Public Library, to a recently discovered box of “Birmingham Police Shooting and Incident Cards.” These cards, seen by almost no one in...
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S3E2: Anger and action
Protest began to swell in Birmingham began to swell the night Bonita Carter was killed, and it grew larger and larger in the days that followed. Black people, who had marched for voting power and integrated water fountains and lunch counters a decade and a half before, took to the streets to...
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S3E1: 'It was a girl in the car'
June 22, 1979, just another evening in Birmingham Alabama, and Bonita Carter and her friends ride their bikes to a convenience store as the sun sets. What happened there would change their lives, and their cities forever. Chapter one of “Unjustifiable” reconstructs those events, moment by moment...
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Trailer: Unjustifiable
Reckon Radio presents: “Unjustifiable,” an investigative series from Pulitzer-prize winning columnist John Archibald and Roy S. Johnson examining an overlooked moment of civil rights history in the heart of the South. The story begins in 1979, when a police officer with a history of complaints…
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S2E3 - Recused Episode 3
In the 1980s and 1990s, Jeff Sessions fought political corruption and drug traffickers as a U.S. Attorney and Alabama attorney general. He didn't mention immigration until his first term in the U.S. Senate. It started with questions about special agent staffing, and ended with one of the most...
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S2E2 - Recused Episode 2
Years before he was the U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions served as the Alabama Attorney General. And in that post, he faced a situation similar to the Russia investigation. It involved a Republican governor, cries of a "witch hunt" and a marble shower stall. Listen to this episode to see the...
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S2E1 - Recused Episode 1
In 2016, Jeff Sessions was announced as President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general. For nearly two years, he held his dream job -- but the experience turned into something of a nightmare due to ongoing investigations into allegations of Russian meddling in the election. Sessions recused...
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Doug Jones: The Reckon Interview
Episode Notes Reckon's John Hammontree spoke with U.S. Sen. Doug Jones about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump.
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Trailer: Recused
Episode Notes Reckon’s Amy Yurkanin dives into the untold story of Jeff Sessions, from the people who knew him best. • How did Jeff Sessions become President Trump’s most controversial cabinet member? And what led to his downfall? • Did you know President Trump wasn’t the first person to pressure...
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S1E4 - Greek Gods Episode 4
Episode Notes Episode Four: What does The Machine teach students about real world politics? John Archibald shares his reflections on how student politics has real world ramifications. His wife Alecia also describes how she was forced to choose between her sorority and her relationship in college,...
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S1E3 - Greek Gods Episode 3
Episode Notes Episode Three: What role does race play on campus? In recent years, the University of Alabama Greek system has been scrutinized by national media for sorority women caught on video using racial slurs and for sorority alumni intent on preserving the school’s “tradition” of white...
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S1E2 - Greek Gods Episode 2
Episode Notes Episode Two: The Machine strikes back. Is the organization nefarious, or just a voting block of friends? Former members of the Machine share their side of the story, including Lee Garrison a Tuscaloosa politician who allegedly used the secret society to be elected to an office…
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S1E1 - Greek Gods Episode 1
Episode Notes Episode One: What is “The Machine?” Hosts Amy and John trace the history of the secret society, with a focus on the events of 1970 – 1993, including allegations of arson, wiretapping, crossing burning and physical assault. Also shares the story of Fran Viselli, owner of Bama Bino’s…
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Trailer: Greek Gods
Episode Notes Threats of violence, wire-tapping, boycotts, voter coercion, whatever it takes to win. That's the playbook of The Machine, a secret society that has controlled student government at the University of Alabama for more than a century. The Machine has been described as "the most…
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About this show
Panther: Blueprint for Black Power is the story of the unexpected birthplace of the Black Panther, a site that changed the course of the nation. But it’s not where you might expect. Far from Oakland, the Black Panther and its principles came from just outside Selma, Alabama. Lowndes County, Alabama: a county where every single thing Black folks did was an act of rebellion. A county where an all-Black party made it to the ballot in the year 1966. A county that paved the way for revolution. The fourth season of the Murrow Award-winning Reckon Radio examines the first year the Voting Rights Act was put to the test, deep in the heart of the Jim Crow South. Pulitzer Prize finalist Roy S. Johnson and journalist Eunice Elliott tell the story of Lowndes County and the election that shaped politics - and activism - as we know it.
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