Debbie Elliott
NPR National Correspondent Debbie Elliott can be heard telling stories from her native South. She covers the latest news and politics, and is attuned to the region's rich culture and history.
For more than two decades, Elliott has been one of NPR's top breaking news reporters. She's covered dozens of natural disasters 鈥� including hurricanes Andrew, Katrina and Harvey. She reported on the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, introducing NPR listeners to teenage boys orphaned in the disaster, struggling to survive on their own.
Elliott spent months covering the nation's worst man-made environmental disaster, the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, documenting its lingering impact on Gulf coast communities and the complex legal battles that ensued. She launched the series "The Disappearing Coast," which examines the oil spill's lasting imprint on a fragile coastline.
She was honored with a 2018 Gracie Award from the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation for crisis coverage, in part for her work covering the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the mass murder of worshippers at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. She was part of NPR's teams covering the mass shootings at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church and the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando.
Elliott has followed national debates over immigration, healthcare, abortion, tobacco, voting rights, welfare reform, same-sex marriage, Confederate monuments, criminal justice and policing in America. She examined the obesity epidemic in Mississippi, a shortage of public defenders in Louisiana, a rise in the incarceration of girls in Florida and chronic inhumane conditions at state prisons in Alabama and Mississippi.
A particular focus for Elliott has been exploring how Americans live through the prism of race, culture and history. Her coverage links lessons from the past to the movement for racial justice in America today.
She's looked at the legacy of landmark civil rights events, including the integration of Little Rock's Central High, the assassination of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, the Montgomery bus boycott and the voting rights march in Selma, Alabama. She contributed a four-part series on the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, which earned a 2019 Gracie Award for documentary.
She was present for the re-opening of civil rights era murder cases, covering trials in the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, the murder of Hattiesburg, Miss., NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer and the killings of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Miss.
Elliott has profiled key figures in politics and the arts, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, historian John Hope Franklin, Congressman John Lewis, children's book author Eric Carle, musician Trombone Shorty and former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. She covered the funerals of the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, and the King of the Blues BB King, and she took listeners along for the second line jazz procession in memory of Fats Domino in New Orleans.
Her stories give a taste of southern culture, from the Nashville hot chicken craze to the traditions of Mardi Gras to the roots of American music at Mississippi's new Grammy Museum. She's highlighted little-known treasures such as North Carolina artist Freeman Vines and his hanging tree guitars, the magical House of Dance and Feathers in New Orleans' Lower 9th ward, a remote Coon Dog Cemetery in north Alabama and the Cajun Christmas tradition of lighting bonfires on the levees of the Mississippi River.
Elliott is a former host of NPR's newsmagazine All Things Considered on the weekends, and is a former Capitol Hill Correspondent. She's an occasional guest host of NPR's news programs and is a contributor to podcasts and live programming.
Elliott was born in Atlanta, grew up in the Memphis area, and is a graduate of the University of Alabama. She lives in south Alabama with her husband, two children and a pet beagle.
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Dynamite Hill is a section in Birmingham so nicknamed because Ku Klux Klan members regularly bombed its streets during the Civil Rights era. NAACP attorney Arthur Shores had a home in this middle-class African-American neighborhood. -
Food can reveal a lot about a person's history and values. A video history project is collecting the public's food memories 鈥� from grandma's cornbread to the favorite restaurants of civil rights giants 鈥� as a way to document the rituals of a changing South. -
The assassination of the NAACP field secretary galvanized a growing civil rights movement, the effects of which are still being felt across the South today. -
Oil giant BP has agreed to pay $1 billion for coastal restoration along the Gulf of Mexico because of the 2010 oil spill. But the nature of some of the projects, including boat ramps and a beachfront hotel, has some environmental groups raising questions about what counts as coastal restoration. -
The giant sinkhole is threatening a neighborhood in southern Louisiana. A salt mine collapsed last year, creating a series of problems regulators say they've never seen before, including tremors and oil and gas leaks and a sinkhole that covers 9 acres. Residents are losing patience. -
Chasing chickens, catching MoonPies or towing your fishing boat as a parade float 鈥� those are just a few of the lesser-known traditions of Mardi Gras you'll find in towns across the Southeast. -
Low water upstream threatens cargo traffic, and saltwater has encroached on the mouth of the river. Now, officials up and down the river are talking about the need for a comprehensive water resources plan. -
The Food and Drug Administration must review all new tobacco brands, and changes to existing ones, under a 2009 law giving the agency jurisdiction over tobacco. But the FDA has yet to approve any products under the new system, leaving some cigarette makers frustrated with the pace. -
In recent years, states have passed a patchwork of immigration laws, at times running afoul of the U.S. Constitution. Advocates for the tough measures say state and local governments should still have a role, even as the debate shifts to the federal level. -
BP has been banned from seeking new contracts with the federal government. It's the latest blow, with the company set to appear in a New Orleans federal court next month to work out its guilty pleas to criminal charges in connection with the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The oil giant has agreed to pay a record $4.5 billion in a criminal settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. But far more money could be at stake in civil litigation stemming from the oil disaster.
