Southern History

March 15, 2019 - Playwright, actor, educator, and community organizer John O'Neal died last month in New Orleans. In his memory, we share a searing story he wrote that ran in Southern Exposure, the print magazine forerunner of Facing South, in 1997.

January 27, 2017 - Since 2005, Nissan workers in Canton, Mississippi — a city with deep roots in the civil rights movement — have been fighting for the right to unionize. This week they are taking their cause across the South with days of action in at least five cities. 

October 27, 2016 - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's calls for his supporters to monitor the polls in 2016 raises the specter of the South's long history of voter intimidation. Voting rights advocates are ramping up their own poll monitoring in response.

April 12, 2016 - Gov. Phil Bryant's decision to sign into law the "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act" has nothing to do with freedom or conscience and everything to do with discrimination.

January 28, 2016 - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's remarks at a town hall this week seemed to revive the old, discredited idea that post-Civil War Reconstruction was a mistake. Her campaign has since issued a clarification, but the controversy shows that the debate over Reconstruction is far from over.

November 6, 2015 - With good preachers shouting a new gospel that champions working folks of all races.

November 3, 2015 - News stories that ask what went wrong with the South too often fail to capture the context of its intergenerational poverty: centuries of enslavement and systemic discrimination that resulted in the immense racial disparities we see today. And it's not just a Southern problem — it's an American one.