WABE Announces August 26 Premiere of Buried Truths’ Season 5, hosted by Pulitzer and Peabody Award Winner Hank Klibanoff
New season revisits the 1957 death of Rev. Clarence Pickett in Columbus, Georgia, whose jailhouse beating led to a medical misdiagnosis and an excruciating death at a young age.
ATLANTA – August 18, 2025 – WABE, Atlanta’s home for NPR and PBS, today announced the return of Buried Truths, the Peabody Award-winning podcast hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hank Klibanoff and featuring research by Emory University students. Season 5 of the acclaimed investigative series premieres Tuesday, August 26, and focuses on the brutal beating and medical neglect that led to the 1957 death of Rev. Clarence Horatious Pickett, a preacher in Columbus, Georgia.
Titled A Preacher, a Policeman, and a Physician, the seven-episode season peels back the layers of systemic failure surrounding Pickett’s death: from his time at the state hospital in Milledgeville, to his violent jailhouse encounter with police, to the indifferent medical care that sealed his fate. Drawing from student research and newly uncovered evidence, the podcast offers a searing look at how race, power, and institutional apathy intersected in mid-century Georgia—and how those forces still resonate today.
“This story has lived in the margins of history for far too long,” said Buried Truths creator and host Hank Klibanoff. “With the help of research by more than 35 Emory University undergraduate students across three semesters, we’ve tried to give Clarence Pickett the attention and dignity that eluded him in life. His story reveals painful truths—not just about one town or one moment, but about how our systems treat the most vulnerable.”
Klibanoff is a former managing editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who now teaches non-fiction writing at Emory. His work with students through the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project has earned national acclaim for blending historical investigation, journalism, and social justice education.
Listeners can stream new episodes of Buried Truths every Tuesday beginning August 26 on all major podcast platforms, including YouTube, as well as on WABE.org and the WABE mobile app.
Past seasons of Buried Truths have explored cases of a Black farmer, Isaiah Nixon, killed by white men for voting; a Black man, James Brazier, killed by a white policeman in 1958 for driving an expensive car, soon followed by the killing of a black neighbor by the same policeman; a 17-year old black Macon resident killed after being incorrectly identified as a gun thief; and 26-year Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger in Brunswick, Georgia, killed by three white men who chased him in trucks.
Buried Truths has won a Peabody Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Award, and Edward R. Murrow Award and the American Bar Association Silver Gavel award for rigorous reporting and emotional storytelling. With each season, Klibanoff and his students shed light on unsolved or unresolved deaths from the civil rights era—and challenge listeners to confront the ongoing legacies of injustice.
The podcast is part of WABE Studios’ commitment to original local programming that informs and empowers communities through deeply reported stories.
Supporters are encouraged to listen, subscribe, and share the podcast—and to support WABE’s mission by donating at wabe.org/donate.
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About WABE
WABE is Atlanta’s original, independent, non-profit source for news and local stories and the choice for NPR and PBS. Our stations deliver fact-based journalism and inclusive, engaging, cultural content that informs, inspires, reflects, and empowers the millions who call the Greater Atlanta area home. In addition, WABE’s programs, podcasts, and events make Atlanta’s stories and storytellers accessible and relevant across various platforms for our broad audience of listeners, viewers, visitors, and members. WABE original programming, along with national NPR and PBS content, is available on WABE 90.1FM, WABE.org, WABE TV (PBS-30), and WABE-HD1/ WABE-HD2 as well as streaming on the WABE Mobile App, Hulu + Live, YouTube TV, Chromecast, PBS.org, Local Now, Roku, Android TV & mobile, Amazon Fire TV & tablets, iOS, tvOs, Android TV live streams. Go to wabe.org for additional information.
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