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 – 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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The officers in Louisiana face criminal charges in the deadly arrest of Ronald Greene after a high-speed chase. Bodycam video showed officers brutally beating the Black driver.
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A week after Hurricane Ian hit North Port, Fla., the floodwaters have just begun to recede. Residents are starting to pick up the pieces to see what's left.
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Racial justice activists say the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., marked a turning point that emboldened far-right political violence — including the Jan. 6th violence.
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Over the past two years, hurricane-related damage in Louisiana has caused some insurance companies to go out of business. Homeowners are coping with higher insurance costs.
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The discovery of the ship on an Alabama river bottom has fostered a renewed hope for descendants of the Clotilda's captives, and the community they founded called Africatown.
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Two new monuments in Montgomery, Ala., are meant to provoke racial reckoning in public spaces. The creators hope they can serve as a counternarrative to monuments intended to glorify the Old South.
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A jury in Brunswick, Ga., has reached a verdict in the case of three white men facing hate crimes charges in the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery.
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Closing arguments are expected to start Monday in the federal hate crimes trial of three white men, who were convicted in state court for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery nearly two years ago.
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The three white men sentenced to life in prison for murdering Ahmaud Arbery are now standing trial on federal hate crime charges. At issue is whether the men targeted Arbery because he was Black.
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A federal judge has denied a plea deal by a father and son in the hate crimes case stemming from the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man shot to death while jogging in a Georgia neighborhood.