This Journalist Helped Eradicate Hospital Debt for Thousands in Memphis

Wendi C. Thomas, the founder of MLK50, created her own newsroom where she and her team are creating change for their community

Wendi C. Thomas.

Thomas uses this perspective to champion Black and Brown voices in her writing at the New York Times, ProPublica, and her own platform MLK50, a publication dedicated to covering stories on poverty, power, and public policy in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s honor.

Recently, Thomas chatted with us about what it was like to start her own newsroom, the future of journalism, and her homemade biscuits that garner marriage proposals.

What MLK50 does is, we start from the perspective that where the status quo doesn’t serve the majority of people, the systems need to be dismantled, period.

I don’t even know if any of them know why that happened or if they even saw the story, but it doesn’t matter, because what I want MLK50 to do is to make a meaningful, measurable difference in the lives of low-income and Black and Brown residents here, and policy change is a great way to make that happen.