How a Black journalist from Alabama and a White journalist from Maine are helping unite their communities
Tuskegee, Alabama — Alabama's Tuskegee News has never had a journalist like Amy Miller. She lives more than 1,000 miles from Tuskegee, and from fellow journalist Guy Trammell — with whom she shares a twice-monthly column called "Color Us Connected."
"I had this idea … about doing a column from a White perspective and trying to match it with somebody doing it from a Black perspective," Miller said.
Their column also runs in the newspaper covering Miller's community in South Berwick, Maine.
The idea came to her after her mostly White New England town became sister cities with the predominately Black Southern city where Trammell lives. Tuskegee welcomed South Berwick residents to visit as part of the exchange and the hospitality was returned in Maine, with dinners of coastal delicacies and town tours.
"This is one opportunity to actually bring people together. Instead of a divided States, we're really the United States," Trammell said.
They don't write about politics. Instead, they share a slice of life from their unique perspectives as a Black man in the South and a White woman in the North.
"Now we feel like we're walking together toward the progress we want to make in this country," Miller said.
"Once you move from communication to relationships, something real can take place and that's what's happening here," Trammell added.