Justice
June 8, 2022 -
With midterm elections now underway, efforts to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions are continuing across the South.
May 27, 2022 -
The ongoing infant formula shortage has illuminated another reproductive injustice: low breastfeeding rates in Black communities and in Southern states. Expanding Medicaid to cover lactation services could reduce breastfeeding disparities, but few states in the South have such a policy in place.
May 26, 2022 -
For Memorial Day, we are republishing an interview from a 1973 issue of Southern Exposure with Walter Collins, a longtime Black Freedom Movement activist who was incarcerated in 1970 for refusing the draft. Collins was involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as well as the Black nationalist group the Republic of New Afrika. His interview touches on questions of colonialism and anti-Black repression in the United States, and is an indictment of the racist aspects of the military.
May 24, 2022 -
A U.S. House subcommittee recently held a hearing into ongoing efforts to limit discussion in public school classrooms on American history, race, and LGBTQ+ issues — and to punish teachers who broach those topics. Among those who testified was James Whitfield, a high school principal from North Texas who lost his job after sending students an email in response to killings of Black people by police and white vigilantes that acknowledged systemic racism and called education "a necessary conduit to get liberty and justice for all."
May 19, 2022 -
The racist and antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims elites are trying to replace the current electorate with immigrants has been tied to numerous domestic U.S. terror attacks, including the recent massacre of Black people inside a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. We look at some of the elected officials who promote the idea — and the corporate contributions flowing to their campaigns.
May 13, 2022 -
A number of states, including several in the South, are bucking the federal policy that allows companies to pay workers with certain disabilities less than the basic minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The Biden administration recently took an initial step to address that pay disparity for tens of thousands of disabled workers nationwide, while a bill to end the practice is stalled in Congress.
May 12, 2022 -
The recent leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion showed that the justices have voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that guaranteed the right to an abortion. If the draft stands, legal abortion would remain widely available in only two Southern states.
