Southern History

March 19, 2015 - It was 50 years ago this week that President Johnson delivered an address to Congress calling for passage of the Voting Rights Act. The speech is regarded as the best of his administration -- and one of the finest pieces of presidential oratory in history.

March 9, 2015 - Viola Liuzzo died for her convictions in the 1960s freedom movement, and is the only white woman honored on the Civil Rights Memorial. But few know her story -- and why authorities conspired to keep her from being known as a hero.

January 30, 2015 - Since launching in 2013, the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina has engaged thousands of people across the state in protests against regressive policies. A photo exhibit that opens Feb. 1 will showcase images from the movement captured by photographer and participant Phil Fonville.

January 19, 2015 - The decision by South Carolina civil rights activists to accept jail time rather than to go free on bail became a widely used tactic in the fight against racial inequality.

December 19, 2014 - George Stinney, Jr. did not receive fair trial in a murder case in the Jim Crow South, a judge says.

December 5, 2014 - The August hanging death of a black teen in a small North Carolina town was quickly ruled a suicide, but the conclusion is being challenged by the victim's family and an independent pathologist hired by the N.C. NAACP. The incident is the latest in a disturbing series of hangings of black men that have some wondering whether lynchings have continued into the post-civil rights era.

December 2, 2014 - Edward Baptist's rigorously researched book interweaves economic analysis of the slave trade and the production that came from it with heartbreaking stories of the lives and suffering of the people who were enslaved.