As a young man, Jake Phelps asked a lot of questions about things that, to an innocent mind, just didn’t make sense – like why his Black neighbors in Winston-Salem, NC were treated differently from the white people in his community. His curiosity led him to become an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, leading social battles against legalized segregation. Phelps later managed the construction of Duke University’s Bryan Center. He joins host Frank Stasio to talk about his involvement in the fight for racial equality and his career in Durham, NC.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.