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Come Hell Or High Water

WUNC | By Laura Lee,
Frank Stasio
Published February 12, 2015 at 12:14 PM EST
Come Hell or High Water follows Derrick Evans in his fight to preserve his community's home in coastal Mississippi.
Leah Mahan
Come Hell or High Water follows Derrick Evans in his fight to preserve his community's home in coastal Mississippi.
Come Hell or High Water follows Derrick Evans in his fight to preserve his community's home in coastal Mississippi.
Credit Leah Mahan
Come Hell or High Water follows Derrick Evans in his fight to preserve his community's home in coastal Mississippi.

Host Frank Stasio talks with filmmaker Leah Mahan; Omega Wilson, president of the West End Revitalization Association; and Danielle Spurlock, professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill about community action for environmental justice

    

When the city of Gulfport, Mississippi made plans to bulldoze the graves of former slaves, teacher-turned-advocate Derrick Evans fought to stop it. 

Evans returned to his home, the Turkey Creek community. His fight to preserve and protect the area are the subject of the film, Come Hell or High Water. The work traces the battles of community members to fight for environmental justice and to survive the destruction and damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. The struggles in Turkey Creek are similar to those faced by community members in Mebane, North Carolina. 

Host Frank Stasio talks with filmmaker Leah Mahan; Omega Wilson, president of the West End Revitalization Association; and Danielle Spurlock, professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Come Hell or High Water screens tonight at 6 p.m. at the UNC School of Public Health with a panel discussion to follow.

COME HELL OR HIGH WATER: The Battle for Turkey Creek - TRAILER (1 MIN.) from Leah on Vimeo.

Copyright 2015 North Carolina Public Radio
Laura Lee
Laura Lee began her journalism career as a producer and booker at NPR. She returned to her native North Carolina to manage The State of Things, a live daily statewide show on WUNC. After working as a managing editor of an education journalism start-up, she became a writer and editor at a national education publication, Edutopia. She then served as the news editor at Carolina Public Press, a statewide investigative newsroom. In 2022, she worked to build collaborative coverage of elections administration and democracy in North Carolina.

Laura received her master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and her bachelor’s degree in political science and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
See stories by Laura Lee
Frank Stasio
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.
See stories by Frank Stasio