Justice

October 13, 2021 - North Carolina legislators have appealed a ruling that struck down a 2018 voter ID statute as racially discriminatory. And a lawsuit challenging a related voter ID amendment is at the North Carolina Supreme Court, where two justices are under scrutiny for conflicts of interest in the case.

October 8, 2021 - The organizer of the Elaine Unity Fest, held on the 102nd anniversary of the mass murder of Black sharecroppers in Arkansas, hopes it will be a first step towards restorative justice and economic development in the city and in Phillips County.

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 4, 2021 - South Carolina is dealing with a high proportion of children suffering from COVID-19, but Gov. Henry McMaster (R) and other state leaders want to block public schools from enforcing mask mandates. We hear from teachers and doctors fighting to protect children from deadly infection.

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 29, 2021 - Governors and legislatures across the South have banned public schools from requiring masks to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The bans have been successfully challenged in lower courts, but appellate courts overturned some of those rulings. Federal courts in several states are taking up the question of whether mask mandate bans violate the rights of students with disabilities.

September 29, 2021 - Senate Democrats recently introduced the Freedom to Vote Act, a compromise alternative to the For the People Act, far-reaching pro-democracy legislation blocked by a Republican filibuster. If the GOP again uses the filibuster to obstruct the bill, Democrats say they'll take on reforming the Senate policy, which requires 60 votes to end debate on a measure. But that will require moving conservative Democrats like West Virginia's Joe Manchin, a filibuster defender who's also among the new bill's sponsors.