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Barry Yeoman

Barry Yeoman is a writer and radio documentarian based in Durham, North Carolina. He contributes to On Earth, The Saturday Evening Post, Audubon, and AARP The Magazine.

Recent Articles

Town and Country

On North Carolina’s Amendment One, the fault line was not racial—it was urban-rural.

Barry YeomanMay 15, 2012
(Flickr/mediacutts)

In the week since North Carolina voters adopted a constitutional amendment banning recognition of any "domestic legal union" other than heterosexual marriage, a consensus has formed among journalists about African-American complicity. According to this narrative, black voters let their Protestant traditionalism trump any sense of fairness toward lesbians and gay men—and became the critical voting bloc that gave Amendment 1 its landslide victory.

The Death and Life of Detroit

Neighborhood groups are bringing the blighted city back, one block at a time. Will City Hall stand in their way?

Barry YeomanApr 30, 2012
(Flickr/Sascha Frank)

A shivering knot of college students stands outside Motor City Java House as John George unlocks the front door. It’s 15 degrees in Detroit on a February morning, and fresh snow covers the Old Redford business district. Cold weather doesn’t stanch the flow of volunteers coming to the city’s northwest corner: They show up every Saturday, arriving in shifts, ready to swing sledgehammers and twist crowbars. George’s wife, Alicia Marion, has learned to expect this traffic since she opened the coffeehouse in 2010. She puts on an apron and starts brewing.