civil rights
October 4, 2019 -
The recent commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the bloody Elaine Massacre sought to correct the historical record and start hard conversations, while the community wrestles with the ongoing legacies of racial trauma and injustice.
June 14, 2019 -
Rev. Dr. William Barber, head of the Poor People's Campaign, was recently sentenced to a year of probation for trespassing after refusing orders to leave a protest at the North Carolina legislature. Barber plans to appeal — and to continue pressing for Southern legislatures to be open to their citizens.
April 22, 2019 -
State regulators recently issued a new general permit for industrial hog farms, and it dashed the hopes of environmental advocates who say it represents a failure to address the unequal pollution burden borne by nonwhite communities. They're calling on the agency to take environmental justice into account in future permitting decisions.
January 18, 2019 -
In his Jan. 15 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on President Trump's pick of William Barr for U.S. attorney general, NAACP President Derrick Johnson called on members to reject the nominee, saying he lacks "a record of strong commitment to civil rights in which communities of color could place their trust."
November 20, 2018 -
The lame-duck North Carolina legislature convenes Nov. 27 to write a new voter ID law after the version it passed in 2013 was struck down for targeting black voters "with almost surgical precision." The same week, the U.S. Senate could vote to confirm to a federal judgeship a lawyer who helped draft the discriminatory law.
October 11, 2018 -
After the Civil War, new state constitutions drafted with the help of freedmen required former Confederate states to establish their first public school systems. But 150 years later, education advocates are still fighting to ensure that Southern states live up to their mandate to offer every student a decent education.
August 31, 2018 -
Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh previously worked as an attorney for the George W. Bush White House, where he promoted the federal appeals court nomination of Charles Pickering — a Mississippi attorney with a history of hostility to civil rights.
