Requiem For A Friend And Neighbor
Valerie Nichols “was the type of worker you didn’t know you needed until she wasn’t there,” writes Stu Durando in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Our Community Stories
A most essential worker
BFBF storyteller Leyla Fern King shares chapter one in the story of Misha Marshall and her family. Misha — or Mama Misha as she is known to some — is a medical technician who has gone above and beyond to care for the people around her as well as far and wide.
A struggling St. Louis mom finds a friend in the midst of the pandemic
In the midst of the pandemic Tyra Johnson has been struggling to keep her children safe and their education on track in one of our region’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. At the same time, she badly needed to find work. Here is Chapter two of Aisha Sultan’s report for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the 63106 Project about how a friendship gave her a measure of hope.
One Little Book I Can Get Is Job
As Steven Jones deals with joblessness, concern for his daughters’ safety, and a presidential election in the time of the pandemic, he thinks of Job, the Tower of Babel, Hannibal Lector, and, more hopefully, Wakanda.
Two Zipcodes, A World Apart
In recent months, Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson, a nonprofit racial equity storytelling project, has been shining a light on the lives of people in 63106, one of St. Louis’s most vulnerable communities when it comes to the social determinants of health. Here is an overview of that work as described in Health Progress, a publication of the Catholic Health Association of America.
Calm Amidst The Chaos
The surging pandemic and the upcoming election has everyone on edge. And, predicts, Jamaica Ray, “We haven’t seen the worst yet. It’s going to get bad, Mon.”
Our Focus on 63106
Our mission is to tell the story of local African-American families that have struggled over generations in our town to gain their purchase on the American Dream.
Life Support
Beverly Jones can hardly wait to get back to the neighborhood she knows and loves. It’s a neighborhood that’s hard to love and in the time of the pandemic even more difficult. “I don’t have time to be sick,” Jones said last month, “because I am helping everybody else.” But last week, Jones contracted COVID-19.
Come what may, Kim Daniel will vote first thing on Election Day
Kim Daniel has vivid and sweet memories from the day she went to the polls with her mother in November 1976. Though she has health issues that mostly keep her inside, she will roll the wellness dice on Nov. 3 and show up in person to cast her vote.
Dance the Vote Aims to Inspire Young Voters
The presidential election next month promises the biggest turnout in a generation, perhaps several generations. But what about Generation Z, with the elder end of that cohort preparing to cast their first vote for a U.S. president? Will they show up? Baby boomer and creative Joan Lipkin is trying to make sure they do. Along with co-producer Ashley L. Tate, she has organized a cadre of fellow artists, most particularly choreographers and dancers, both locally and across the country to inspire college students among others to register and cast a vote.