Leoneda Inge
Race and Southern Culture Reporter/Co-Host, "Tested" PodcastLeoneda Inge is WUNC’s race and southern culture reporter, the first public radio journalist in the South to hold such a position. She explores modern and historical constructs to tell stories of poverty and wealth, health and food culture, education and racial identity. Leoneda is also co-host of the podcast Tested, allowing for even more in-depth storytelling on those topics.
Leoneda’s most recent work of note includes “A Tale of Two North Carolina Rural Sheriffs,” produced in partnership with Independent Lens; a series of reports on “Race, Slavery, Memory & Monuments,” winner of a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists; and the series “When a Rural North Carolina Clinic Closes,” produced in partnership with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
Leoneda is the recipient of several awards, including Gracie awards from the Alliance of Women in Media, the Associated Press, and the Radio, Television, Digital News Association. She was part of WUNC team that won an Alfred I. duPont Award from Columbia University for the group series – “North Carolina Voices: Understanding Poverty.” In 2017, Leoneda was named “Journalist of Distinction” by the National Association of Black Journalists.
Leoneda is a graduate of Florida A&M University and Columbia University, where she earned her Master's Degree in Journalism as a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics. Leoneda traveled to Berlin, Brussels and Prague as a German/American Journalist Exchange Fellow and to Tokyo as a fellow with the Foreign Press Center – Japan.
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The Make-A-Wish Foundation is working hard to chip away at a backlog of 'wishes' for critically-ill children slowed down by the pandemic. -
Black elected officials across North Carolina celebrate Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson, a young Black man who has been propelled into the spotlight after expulsion by Republicans.
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Mama Dip's Kitchen has been a popular soul food restaurant in Chapel Hill for decades. Family, friends, UNC students, basketball icon — and famed UNC alum — Michael Jordan, and literary star Toni Morrison have all eaten there. But now the iconic spot is up for sale.
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Susan Gravely, the founder of the Vietri Italian dinnerware company, talks about how her life in an eastern North Carolina tobacco family led her to set the perfect table.
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The debate over reparations is real. The directors of the film "The Big Payback" is spreading the word on the importance of reparations for the descendants of African slaves in the United States. Students at HBCUs, like Shaw University, are learning the pros and cons of reparations and debating the issue.
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Rissi Palmer was poised to be a country music star. But bad managers and bankruptcy forced her to start over in an industry that elevated few Black women.
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Leoneda Inge speaks with the director of the Mound Bayou Museum in the Mississippi Delta and how it features articles and props from the "Women of the Movement" miniseries about the lynching of Black teenager, Emmett Till.
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Greensboro native Rhiannon Giddens is a Grammy-award-winning musician. She returned to North Carolina recently with an opera that she co-composed about the life of Omar ibn Said, a Muslim man who was enslaved in the state in the 1800s.
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If you’re driving on U.S. Highway 17, close to the line dividing Bertie and Chowan counties, a new billboard might catch your eye. It reads: “Welcome to Edenton. We Apologize for the Confederate Statue. We’re Working on It.”
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Before the pandemic, the organization was able to grant 200 wishes a year, from bedroom makeovers to trips to Disney World. But the pandemic has created a backlog.
