Gwendolyn Glenn
Host/Feature ReporterGwendolyn is an award-winning journalist who has covered a broad range of stories for local and national media. She voiced reports for National Public Radio and for several years was a producer for NPR’s All Things Considered news program in Wash., D.C. She also worked as an on-air contract reporter for CNN and has had her work featured in the Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post.
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Congress narrowly passed the Trump administration’s budget Thursday that cuts funding for numerous food and health aid programs, including Medicaid. Former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt says things are not good, but the July 4 holiday is a time to remember that the past has involved far worse challenges, especially for African Americans and that the country is a work in progress. -
A riotous celebration of culture, color and creativity — that’s how Mint Museum Uptown officials describe "Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective," on display through Sept. 21. The exhibition showcases 30 years of collaborative work by internationally acclaimed brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre. In this interview with WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn, they describe their process and vision. -
June is Anti-Lynching Month in North Carolina. The Charlotte Post published a series on Willie McDaniel, a Black man lynched in Charlotte in 1929. Freelance journalist Helen Schwab, who wrote the series, spoke with WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn about why his story still matters. -
Her name may not be well known, but Bessie Stringfield’s prowess, antics and bravado on a motorcycle are legendary. Stringfield taught herself to ride a motorcycle as a teen. She went on to become the first African American woman to travel across country solo on a motorcycle in the 1930s. WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn has more on North Carolina native Bessie Stringfield, mentioned in a current exhibition at the Gantt Center in uptown Charlotte. -
The American Association of University Professors is calling the firing of a UNC Charlotte employee who implied in a secret recording that the university’s DEI work is continuing, wrong. AAUP issued a statement to that effect this week. -
A conservative group released what appeared to be an undercover recording of a UNC Charlotte employee saying she was covertly continuing diversity, equity and inclusion work at the university. University officials deny the claim.
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The world-renowned "Philadanco! The Philadelphia Dance Company" will be in Charlotte for a one-night performance on May 28, at the Knight Theater. It's the first local show for the mostly African American company, which was founded by Joan Myers Brown, who turns 94 this year. WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn talks with Brown about dance and more. -
Monday is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Malcolm X, a civil rights activist, minister and spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Opposition was strong on April 18, 1963, when Malcolm X held a debate on racial integration with civil rights leader and attorney Floyd McKissick in Durham. WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn talks with Floyd McKissick's son. -
In 1863, abolitionist Harriet Tubman guided a raid that liberated nearly 760 enslaved people working on rice plantations along the Combahee River near Beaufort, South Carolina. Dr. Edda Fields-Black, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote a book about the raid titled "Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War." It shares the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History. WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn speaks with Fields-Black. -
In 1873, a group of about 50 African Americans facing threats from the Ku Klux Klan in their hometown of Cross Anchor in Spartanburg County, left in the middle of the night for the western North Carolina mountains. They named a king and queen, built a two-story palace and called their new kingdom Happy Land. Bestselling author Dolen Perkins-Valdez has written a novel with the same title based on this incredible true story.
