History
July 15, 2021 -
CRT teaching bans are being imposed in states and local communities nationwide. But their distorting effects on young people's understanding of their nation's past and present will take a particularly heavy toll in the South — the heart of Black America and the repository of so much Black history.
July 13, 2021 -
At a series of events hosted by the Marshallese Educational Initiative, Marshallese leaders in Arkansas discussed the public health inequities their community faces as a result of the U.S. nuclear legacy, climate change, and government policy.
July 7, 2021 -
Geeta N. Kapur, a North Carolina civil rights attorney and UNC-Chapel Hill alumna who has a book coming out in August about the school's fraught racial history, says it should come as no surprise that journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones — a Black woman bold enough to speak truth to power — was initially denied tenure by the school and then granted it only begrudgingly. Tenure would have given her a degree of academic freedom to reveal other truths that some don't want to hear.
June 28, 2021 -
Joan C. Browning of West Virginia took part in the 1961 Freedom Rides challenging segregated transportation in the Jim Crow South, and she recently welcomed the Black Voters Matter Freedom Ride for Voting Rights to Charleston. We're reprinting the full text of her remarks drawing on history to suggest paths to a more just future.
June 18, 2021 -
A 1988 issue of Southern Exposure magazine, the print forerunner to Facing South, reprinted a visionary address by North Carolina-based organizer Mab Segrest calling for an intersectional Southern gay and lesbian liberation movement. We're republishing it in honor of Pride Month.
June 17, 2021 -
This Juneteenth, Black Voters Matter will launch a bus tour through Southern states marking the 60th anniversary of the original Freedom Rides that successfully challenged segregation. The tour will promote the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and drive home the importance of confronting voter suppression.
June 10, 2021 -
As in the South of the 19th century, we have a massive group among us willing to throw democracy away in order to assure their ascendancy. With a dominant political party committed to autocracy, we're treading new ground — at least new ground in modern times.