north carolina
June 30, 2020 -
Black Lives Matter protesters recently targeted a statue of former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, an enslaver and rapist notorious for sanctioning physical violence against enslaved people. Days later, a commission discussed removing an enormous portrait of Ruffin that looms over the state Supreme Court.
June 26, 2020 -
In 1978, Southern Exposure, the print forerunner of Facing South, interviewed Ingle, one of the founders of the Southern Coalition for Jails and Prisons, for an issue on prisons. Ingle continues his prisoner advocacy work today in Nashville, Tennessee, and Facing South recently talked with him about the sea changes he's witnessed in that time in both the U.S. prison system and the prison reform movement.
June 17, 2020 -
Antoine Williams, an art professor at Guilford College in Greensboro, produces mixed media artwork informed by critical race theory. He recently auctioned off two of his works to benefit Black Lives Matter and other groups working for racial justice — part of a broader effort by the art world to take a stand against racism. What Williams hoped to sell in two weeks was gone in 30 minutes, so now he's planning his next steps.
June 9, 2020 -
Demonstrations against the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and police violence generally have spread to small towns like Siler City, North Carolina, home to a chicken-processing plant that's been hit hard by COVID-19. Residents connecting police violence to ICE violence came out by the hundreds to say that "las vidas negras importan."
June 5, 2020 -
Demonstrators protesting police brutality in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd are occupying highways that were built by destroying black communities.
June 3, 2020 -
The organizing drive at HCA Healthcare's Mission Hospital in Asheville is National Nurses United's largest labor campaign ever undertaken in a state with a long history of hostility to unions. A win could help shift the power dynamic in North Carolina and the rest of the South.
May 24, 2020 -
Durham, North Carolina-based peace, labor, civil rights, and human rights activist and organizer Raymond Lee "Bro Ray" Eurquhart died on March 30. In this excerpt of a 2002 oral history interview, he recounts his early political education and organizing while serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War.
