Gwendolyn Glenn

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.

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.

Black motorcycle riders have always been around, but they haven’t received much attention — and when they have, it’s often been negative. A new exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture, "Black Behind Bars," aims to shine a positive light on the history of Black bikers. For photographer Alvin C. Jacobs Jr., who shot the images for the show, it’s also about mental health. WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn has more on the exhibition and Black biker culture.

Student government leaders at UNC-Chapel Hill are leading a national effort that calls for the Trump administration to back off from its attempts to control student activities and curricula on college campuses. The students are circulating a letter that accuses the White House of politicizing higher education, targeting international students and threatening funding at schools that do not end diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Adolfo Alvarez, student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill, tells WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn why the group felt the need to launch this campaign.

People came from near and far in large numbers to attend the Great West Side Fish Fry on West Trade Street in Charlotte on Saturday.