July 2, 2021 -
Last week the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was suing Georgia over its restrictive new voting law, part of a recent wave of such legislation passed by Republican-led state legislatures. But a July 1 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on a Voting Rights Act case out of Arizona makes the lawsuit's future even more uncertain.
July 1, 2021 -
The president has nominated a record number of people of color to federal courts, but his choice to fill a vacancy on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from the Carolinas, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, is a white man.
July 1, 2021 -
Over 2 million adults — including over half a million essential workers — fall into the Medicaid coverage gap in states that have refused to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act, and most are people of color living in the South. Congressional Democrats from Georgia and Texas recently unveiled plans to work around GOP-controlled legislatures' refusal to authorize broader Medicaid coverage even when facing a deadly pandemic.
June 29, 2021 -
In the 1960s, Athens's urban renewal program evicted a Black neighborhood through eminent domain to build dorms for University of Georgia students. In response to displaced families' demands, Athens-Clarke County has set aside money dedicated to public projects of their choosing, a form of reparations for the community that was lost.
June 28, 2021 -
Joan C. Browning of West Virginia took part in the 1961 Freedom Rides challenging segregated transportation in the Jim Crow South, and she recently welcomed the Black Voters Matter Freedom Ride for Voting Rights to Charleston. We're reprinting the full text of her remarks drawing on history to suggest paths to a more just future.
June 25, 2021 -
A report from the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General found that several Southern states failed to deliver unemployment payments in a timely manner. In Georgia, for example, about 80,000 unemployment applications remain in limbo.
June 18, 2021 -
Despite lawsuits instituting reforms, state prisons across the U.S. continue to be places of physical and sexual violence, especially against incarcerated people of color. Conditions got so bad in Alabama's prisons that the federal government recently sued the state for violating the Constitution. Robert T. Chase, a historian of prisons, says they need the same kind of scrutiny now faced by police.
