Politics

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 - 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.

September 24, 2021 - Earlier this year, Congress approved expanding the child tax credit and paying it out in advance as part of the American Rescue Plan economic stimulus bill. As Democrats discuss extending the credit, advocates argue that making it permanent would slash child poverty rates, which are especially high across the South.

September 17, 2021 - Though a lawsuit seeking to restore the voting rights of North Carolinians on probation or parole suffered setbacks in recent court rulings, the broader movement to re-enfranchise people with felony convictions has made gains in Southern states in recent years.

September 16, 2021 - With far-right activists planning to gather in Washington, D.C., and other cities on Sept. 18 to protest the arrests of those involved in the attempted Jan. 6 overthrow of the presidential election, we look at how the prosecutions of the violent domestic terrorists known as "accelerationists" are progressing.