black belt
December 17, 2021 -
Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi are among the states with the lowest vaccination rates. Grassroots organizations there are partnering with public health officials to battle misinformation and distrust in rural, Latino, and Black communities — but elected officials in those states aren't making their jobs any easier.
December 16, 2021 -
Southern states' new Republican-drawn election maps would mean less political power for communities of color in the Black Belt region. Voters there are now asking state and federal courts to decide if the new districts violate state or federal law, including the Voting Rights Act.
May 14, 2020 -
Hospitals in many rural Southern counties with COVID-19 outbreaks were financially vulnerable even before the crisis. What happens next?
April 10, 2020 -
The Southeast Crescent Regional Commission was created in 2008 to provide economic development assistance to Black Belt states but has never received its full appropriation from Congress — even while its counterpart covering whiter, richer Northern states has. With Black Belt communities being ravaged by the pandemic, it's past time for action.
June 16, 2017 -
Rural areas draw the ire of Trump opponents on the left and right who charge that residents voted against their own interests. But in the South, which has the country's biggest rural Black population and growing numbers of rural Hispanics, many of the rural communities most threatened by Trump's policies did not vote for him.
May 19, 2017 -
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's popular Roundup herbicide, is widely sprayed on crops throughout the South. But a class-action lawsuit brought by cancer patients accuses the company of failing to adequately warn people about the chemical's health risks.
March 22, 2017 -
Congress created the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority to promote economic development in two of the nation's most economically distressed regions, but President Trump has proposed ending the agencies' modest funding altogether.
