History

October 7, 2021 - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was built by enslaved Black people but refused to admit Black students until the 1950s and only after a protracted legal fight — and the school continues to struggle around issues of race today. Civil rights attorney Geeta N. Kapur documents UNC's troubling history in her new book "To Drink From the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation's Oldest Public University," which she discussed with Facing South.

October 1, 2021 - In 1974, Southern Exposure, the print forerunner to Facing South, published an issue of oral histories that included recollections of people who'd been involved with the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. Many of them refer to the Elaine Massacre, a mass murder of rural Black Arkansans by white mobs in response to sharecropper organizing attempts that took place 102 years ago this week. We're reprinting those oral histories in memory of the massacre.

October 1, 2021 - This week marks the 102nd anniversary of the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas, when a union organizing attempt by Black sharecroppers was met with deadly violence by mobs of white people. From the archives of Southern Exposure, the print forerunner to Facing South, we're republishing an account of the tragedy drawn in part from oral histories of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union that appeared in the same issue.

September 29, 2021 - Facing South interviewed co-director Julie Cohen and producer and writer Talleah Bridges McMahon, two creators behind "My Name is Pauli Murray," a new documentary that details the triumphs and struggles of the groundbreaking civil rights and feminist lawyer and advocate who was raised in Durham, North Carolina.

September 24, 2021 - It's been 10 years since Georgia executed Troy Davis despite questions about his guilt and calls for mercy from world leaders. One Southern state has outlawed capital punishment since then, but most states in the region still have death sentences on the books.

September 21, 2021 - Chapel Hill has a reputation as a liberal town, but it's always been a racially unjust society — in large part because of the actions of the University of North Carolina, the nation's oldest public university. The same school that once denied clean water to its Black workers and their families now dumps toxic coal plant pollution on them.

September 3, 2021 - Even before the pandemic, evictions disproportionately hurt Black people living in the South. Now, with the moratorium lifted, Black communities will be hit even harder. Meanwhile, Southern states have been slow to distribute federal aid aimed at avoiding evictions.