Alabama

July 3, 2015 - Politics and economics helped spark the removal of Confederate flags across the South in the wake of the Charleston church shootings. But does that signal broader changes in the region's culture?

June 25, 2015 - In the latest installment of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation's "Southern Voices" oral history project, organizers from the region talk about their experiences with racism.

May 22, 2015 - The disaster near Santa Barbara, the site of a 1969 oil spill that sparked the modern environmental movement, comes amid a push to open the Atlantic and Eastern Gulf to oil and gas drilling. It underscores the risk presented by coastal energy development coupled with weak regulation.

May 21, 2015 - Nine states, four of them in the South, hold judicial elections but don't ban judges from seeking campaign cash from people that could appear before them. Following a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a Florida case upholding such bans, judicial watchdogs are working to change the law in these outlier states.

May 21, 2015 - The Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation has launched a "Southern Voices" oral history project to capture the stories of Southern leaders working for social and economic justice. The latest installment focuses on organizing for immigration reform.

April 30, 2015 - Five years after the BP disaster, a group of governors led by North Carolina's Pat McCrory is pushing for drilling in the Atlantic. The group has close ties to a secret-money nonprofit and energy lobbyists, a relationship that raises questions about transparency, ethics and the blurring of public and private interests.

April 24, 2015 - There's growing scientific consensus linking the uptick in seismic activity with a type of wastewater disposal from oil and gas drilling.