Joe Atkins

November 12, 2012 - Amid all the talk of a "New South," the region remains plagued by the old problems of entrenched poverty and racism.

November 1, 2012 - Inspired by the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and A. Philip Randolph, the Mississippi Student Justice Alliance was formed to help workers at the giant Nissan plant in Canton, Miss. unionize and to educate young people about labor issues.

October 24, 2012 - As corporate money pours into the presidential race, workers have to fight for their own rights -- and they're doing just that at Walmart and a Louisiana salt mine.

October 10, 2012 - Demonstrators are expected to protest Walmart's treatment of its workers outside its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters Wednesday, Oct. 10, bringing home a message that has been getting louder and louder across the nation and beyond.

October 1, 2012 - Today marks 50 years since James Meredith became the first black person to enter the University of Mississippi, sparking a riot that some have called "the last battle of the Civil War." Now 80, he has continued to baffle admirers and detractors throughout his life.

September 27, 2012 - A remembrance of Victor Bussie, a longtime Louisiana labor leader who fought anti-union laws and whose home was bombed by the Klan.

September 17, 2012 - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration's school leaders have come perilously close to sounding like one of those Mississippi legislators back in 1985 who dealt with a statewide teachers' strike by giving them a pay raise -- but at the cost of a provision that prevented them from ever striking again.