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A Student's Perspective On Mississippi: Beautiful, Engulfing And Sometimes...

Every day on his way to class, Terrence Johnson walks by a bronze statue and thinks about history. The statue depicts James Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African-American to enroll at the...

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A Night At Red's Juke Joint In The Mississippi Delta Is A True Blues Experience

If you're in Clarksdale, Miss., home of the Delta blues, everybody says you have to go to Red's juke joint. The hole-in-the-wall club is the real deal. It's just a small room, a few tables and a fridge...

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How To Make Boring Sell: In A Jiffy

We hear a lot about U.S. companies laying off workers and shipping jobs overseas. So, amid the global pressures to downsize, how do you hang onto your workforce? We went looking for answers in Chelsea,...

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The Legacy Of The Mississippi Delta Chinese

Think of the Mississippi Delta. Maybe you imagine cotton fields, sharecroppers and blues music. It's been all that. But for more than a century, the Delta has also been a magnet for immigrants. I was...

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Hamtramck, Michigan: An Evolving City Of Immigrants

Pick a street corner in downtown Hamtramck, Mich., and you'll be struck by the incredible mix of cultures crammed into this tiny, 2-square-mile city. A Catholic church across the street from a mosque....

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Amid Talk Of Tariffs, What Happens To Companies That Straddle The Border?

Think about the avocados you mash for your Super Bowl guacamole, or the fresh tomatoes you enjoy in the winter. There's a good chance they came from Mexico. Our southern neighbor is the United States'...

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When The Border Is Just Next Door, Crossing It Is A Fact Of (Daily) Life

Depending on where you sit, the U.S.-Mexico border is: a) a dangerous frontier that allows drug traffickers and illegal immigrants to cross freely into the U.S. or b) a familiar frontier that is...

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PHOTOS: The Creamy, Sculpted Dunes Of White Sands National Monument

Before we headed out on our latest road trip for the Our Land series, we put a call out on social media, asking for ideas of places we should go in Arizona and New Mexico. Shannon Miller's suggestion...

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In Rural Alaska, A Young Doctor Walks To His Patient's Bedside

In rural Alaska, providing health care means overcoming a lot of hurdles. Fickle weather that can leave patients stranded, for one. Also: complicated geography. Many Alaskan villages have no roads...

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Leaving Timber Behind, An Alaska Town Turns To Tourism

What happens to a town when a key industry collapses? Sometimes it dies. But sometimes it finds a way to reinvent itself. Case in point: Ketchikan, Alaska, where the demise of the timber industry has...

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What It's Like To Live In A Small, Rural, Politically Divided Town

If you fly into Haines, Alaska, you'll be on a prop plane so small that your pilot will call the roll. "Melissa." Yup. "Mary." Yes. "Joseph?" Right here. Just 2,500 people live in Haines — a small town...

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In Southeast Alaska, The Ferry System Is A Lifeline

Southeast Alaska is known as the Panhandle: It's a long, narrow strip of mainland coastline, plus 1,000 islands and the braided waterways that surround them. In most places, there are no roads...

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In This Alaska Family, Life Lessons Are Passed Down On The Water

Alaska is home to about 18,000 fishermen who harvest nearly 6 billion pounds of seafood each year. Salmon dominates the catch, five species in all : chum salmon, sockeye, king, coho and pink. For a...

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A Native Village In Alaska Where The Past Is Key To The Future

What does it mean to lose your land, your language, and your heritage? For Alaska Natives, these are existential threats. On a trip to Southeast Alaska, I traveled to one village that is finding new...

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Imagining Daniel Day-Lewis In A Life Without Acting

He brooded, as Lincoln. He seduced in The Unbearable Lightness of Being . And he murdered, in There Will Be Blood. This week, Daniel Day-Lewis — a three-time Oscar winner, and incomparable film...

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Meyers Chuck, AK, 99903

There are only two ways to get to Meyers Chuck, Alaska: by boat or float plane. If you go by plane, you might hitch a ride on a de Havilland Beaver, circa 1958 — one of the planes that brings the mail...

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Young Astronaut Hopeful Gets NASA Tour Of His (Space) Dreams

Sixteen-year-old Murad Rahimov peered down into a gigantic space he had only dreamed about before: the world's largest clean room, kept scrupulously free of any dust or contamination, where NASA...

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'You Have To Help': Gulf Coast Neighbors Fly, Cook And Organize For Harvey...

Right after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, electrician Rocky Breaux, 53, loaded up his airboat in Houma, La., and drove to help rescue people from the swiftly rising floodwaters. And now that the waters...

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'They're Scared': Immigration Fears Exacerbate Migrant Farmworker Shortage

On a recent, perfect morning at Johnson Farms in northern Michigan, workers climb wooden ladders high up into the trees, picking bags strapped across their bodies. The branches are heavy with fruit...

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Tom Petty's Songs Served As Anthems For Many Generations

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: A moment now to remember one of rock music's most-beloved musicians. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AMERICAN GIRL") TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS:...

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