Before arriving at GPB, Sonia Murray was also Digital Content Manager a few blocks down 14th Street at CBS Radio. A professional journey that began as a general assignment writer, business reporter and pop music critic for the AJC (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). And to end this with one more acronym, she's also a proud HU (Howard University) graduate!
"A work realized this way needed to be able to come home to Atlanta," noted Leatrice Ellzy Wright, a Sr. Director of Programming at the Apollo Theater who also still calls South Fulton home.
"I don’t want it if it's not authentic," Ludacris said. "If it's not organic, then I don't want any parts of it. That's just who I am. And I want to feel like I earned it. And I'm [going to] be honest with y'all — today I feel like I earned it!" (And Ludacris declared that before his Fast X made $320 million worldwide; securing the second-biggest global opening weekend of the year.)
Actress, singer and onetime Atlanta resident Keke Palmer received the Ossie Davis Award from The Atlanta Film Festival on its closing night. "You deserve anything you ever get," fellow multi-hyphenate Dolly Parton said in a recorded portion of the presentation.
On International Women's Day, Atlanta's own trailblazer — by way of Muskogee, Oklahoma — Xernona Clayton was celebrated with a bronze statue in the heart of the city. She says she asked sculptor Ed Dwight to make her look like a combination of Halle Berry, Lena Horne and Coretta Scott King. Her verdict? "Fabulous!"
"I think what, well, surprises people when they have boiled peanuts like the first time, is they have this idea of like roasted Planters peanuts," Jason Clemmons explains, "Then they bite into it and all of a sudden it's super-soft " 'Ugh! Gross!' I think that's kind of what it is."