We’re excited to announce that we’ve added Rebecca Cadenhead to our reporting team. Cadenhead, who started July 1, will write stories about youth life and justice for MLK50.
She comes to us via Report for America, the national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. She studied philosophy and African American studies at Harvard University, where she recently graduated cum laude. She’s been a reporting fellow for The Nation and Harvard Magazine, where she wrote about student life and activism. She also served as an editor for Harvard’s student newspaper and literary magazine.
She says that when she was applying for RFA, she saw MLK50: Justice Through Journalism’s call for a reporter to cover the lives of youths in Memphis. It related to work she’d already done, and it felt personally meaningful.
“I think juvenile justice is an underreported topic,” she said. “And I think the attitudes around youth facilitates, if not outright violence, at least an unjust exercise of power against children. It happens to all youth but particularly poor, Black and Latino children. Documenting that, and how strange it is, is important work for journalists.”
Cadenhead says she’s thought about areas she’d like to dig into. Youths, she says, play a huge role in shaping the arts, for instance, and she’d like to investigate the relationship between young people and the police, including what happens in juvenile detention centers. She wants to help illuminate the difference between the outside view of youth and what they actually think and feel.
“As a young person myself, I know that kids make mistakes, but too often, people think those mistakes reflect something deeper about who they are,” she said.
Still, it won’t be all work for Cadenhead. She’s looking forward to exploring the city’s music scene. “I want to go to a lot of shows,” she said. She’s classically trained in the violin and once went through a “fiddling phase” that she’d like to revisit here.
Fresh from school, she’s moved here from the New York City area, where she’s spent most of her life. “This is the first phase of my adulthood,” she said, smiling. “I’m looking forward to that.”
This story is brought to you byMLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom focused on poverty, power and policy in Memphis. Support independent journalism by making a tax-deductible donation today. MLK50 is also supported by these generous donors.