Jim Crow

March 10, 2021 - Republican lawmakers nationwide have introduced over 250 bills this year to restrict voting access in 43 states — 39 bills in Georgia alone. Given the backlash against last year's record-breaking voter turnout playing out at the state level, voting rights advocates are looking to Congress and the promise of H.R. 1, which has now advanced to the U.S. Senate. But can it get past the filibuster?

January 29, 2021 - Biden has pledged to be the country's "most pro-union president." But will he and congressional Democrats succeed in passing sweeping reforms that could dismantle the barriers to labor organizing in the South?

January 22, 2021 - The University of Arkansas professor who co-wrote a book on the Republican Party's decades-long effort to win white Southerners' support through coded and not-so-coded appeals to racism, sexism, and Christian nationalism talks with Facing South about where that approach stands today — and what the election results in Georgia tell us about its future.

November 4, 2020 - Though the South trended red in this year's general election, voters in Southern states approved progressive ballot measures that raise the minimum wage, reject Jim Crow-era election laws and flag symbolism, and relax drug laws. They also turned down measures that would have impeded this kind of direct democracy.

September 24, 2020 - The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a Florida law requiring people with felony convictions to pay off all court fines and fees before they can cast ballots again, so voting rights advocates are redoubling efforts to raise funds to help the indigent.

July 9, 2020 - States across the country require people with felony convictions to purchase their voting rights back if they ever want to cast a ballot again. It is a mechanism that felony disenfranchisement schemes increasingly rely upon, and it marks a return to the sordid tactics of Jim Crow.

January 29, 2020 - The voter registration deadline for Florida's 2020 primary election is approaching. A federal judge ruled that the state cannot require people with felony convictions to pay court fines, if they cannot afford it, to have their voting rights restored. An appeals court is reviewing that decision.