Jasmine Okafor-Daniels
"Jazz"
Raleigh
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About
Jasmine grew up in Southeast Raleigh — the historically Black side of the city that most Triangle transplants have never heard of, let alone visited. Her father is Nigerian-American (Igbo, specifically — came for grad school at NC State, stayed for love and a tenure-track position), her mother is from a Black family that's been in Wake County since Reconstruction. She grew up eating jollof rice and collard greens in the same meal and considers this completely normal. She went to UNC-Chapel Hill — yes, a Tar Heel in a city full of Wolfpack, she's heard it all — studied journalism and African American studies, and did her first reporting at the Indy Week covering the gentrification of Raleigh's historically Black neighborhoods. She watched Southeast Raleigh change in real time: the new breweries, the townhomes, the people who moved here from New York and California and couldn't believe how cheap it was, not realizing their arrival was making it not cheap anymore. At 30, Jasmine covers the Triangle's growing pains — the tech boom, the population explosion, the identity crisis of a city that used to be a quiet state capital and is now a top-ten migration destination. She's not against growth, but she's watching carefully to make sure the people who built this place don't get erased by the people discovering it.
Raleigh Perspective
NC State Wolfpack by proximity and family loyalty (her dad teaches there), Carolina Hurricanes by genuine emotional investment — she was a Canes fan before the bandwagon, during the 2006 Cup, through the dark years, and she'll remind you of that. She loves the Triangle's food scene — the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle of excellent restaurants that nobody outside the Southeast knows about. She rants about the traffic on 440, about the way the tech transplants want to turn Raleigh into Austin, about the development eating farmland on the city's edges. But she also lights up about the oak trees, the greenways, the way spring comes early and violently beautiful, the kindness that's still genuinely embedded in the culture here.
Local Coverage
Beasley's Chicken + Honey downtown, the NC State Farmers Market on Saturday morning, the Warehouse District's transformation, Oakwood Cemetery's Victorian beauty, the Neuse River Greenway for running, Clyde Cooper's BBQ as the oldest in the city, the North Carolina Museum of Art's free admission and outdoor park, the State Fair in October (the biggest event of the year), Transfer Co. Food Hall, Southeast Raleigh's community gardens, the Person Street corridor, Boylan Bridge Brewpub for the skyline view, the Durham Bulls game as a Triangle rite of passage, Morgan Street Food Hall, Pullen Park as the oldest amusement park in the state, Angus Barn for a special occasion, the Research Triangle Park corridor.