‘Calls From Home’: How one Kentucky radio station connects inmates and families

WHITESBURG, KY.—As the last notes of Childish Gambino’s “Me And Your Mama” fade to silence, Tom Sexton leans forward into a microphone.

“Coming up by request,” he says in a softened-for-radio Appalachian drawl, “going out to Sporty Black from his wife, this is Kendrick Lamar with ‘LOVE.’ ”

The melodic R&B track then begins to emanate from the heart of this small eastern Kentucky town, across the ice-clad mountains of central Appalachia. Close to 100,000 people could be tuning in, but tonight’s shows are targeted for a very specific audience. People like “Sporty Black.”

More than 5,000 men are incarcerated in the six federal and state prisons in the broadcasting range of WMMT. Every week, for almost 20 years, the station has produced a show called “Calls From Home” that broadcasts recorded messages from the inmates’ friends and family members…

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