History
August 18, 2021 -
On the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, protestors will once again descend on the nation's capital as well as cities across the South to demand congressional action on civil rights. They're pressing for passage of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which have been stalled in the Senate because of Republican obstruction and some Democrats' unwillingness to end the filibuster.
August 12, 2021 -
Lawsuits brought by white farmers claiming "reverse racism" halted billions of dollars in targeted aid for Black farmers and other farmers of color provided through the American Rescue Plan. The blow has deepened distrust between the Black farming community and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a relationship troubled by a history of racial discrimination and botched settlements.
July 23, 2021 -
In 1982, a rural, Black North Carolina community suffered damages from a timber company's careless aerial application of toxic pesticides. The fight that ensued with state authorities led to local resident Billie Lee Rogers becoming a lifelong advocate for pesticide safety and environmental justice. Rogers passed away in June, and we share pesticide safety advocate Allen Spalt's remarks about her life and work delivered at her memorial service.
July 20, 2021 -
Nguyen, the co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, helped craft Virginia's Voting Rights Act, the first such state law in the South and the nation's most far-reaching one. She talked with Facing South about the historical significance of the law, the need for federal voting rights legislation, and her hopes for the future of voting rights.
July 15, 2021 -
CRT teaching bans are being imposed in states and local communities nationwide. But their distorting effects on young people's understanding of their nation's past and present will take a particularly heavy toll in the South — the heart of Black America and the repository of so much Black history.
July 13, 2021 -
At a series of events hosted by the Marshallese Educational Initiative, Marshallese leaders in Arkansas discussed the public health inequities their community faces as a result of the U.S. nuclear legacy, climate change, and government policy.
July 7, 2021 -
Geeta N. Kapur, a North Carolina civil rights attorney and UNC-Chapel Hill alumna who has a book coming out in August about the school's fraught racial history, says it should come as no surprise that journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones — a Black woman bold enough to speak truth to power — was initially denied tenure by the school and then granted it only begrudgingly. Tenure would have given her a degree of academic freedom to reveal other truths that some don't want to hear.