Arkansas

January 24, 2023 - The poverty rate for people with disabilities is more than double that of our nondisabled counterparts, and the disparity is being driven by state policy choices that force us into institutions unnecessarily and allow employers to pay us subminimum wages. Some Southern states have already embraced reforms, and others should act now.

November 18, 2022 - Voters across the South weighed in on dozens of high-profile ballot initiatives in this year's general election, directly shaping policy on matters including reproductive rights, prison labor, and ballot measures themselves. In another election to be held next month, Louisiana voters will consider three ballot measures, including one to bar noncitizens from voting in local elections.

March 23, 2022 - Arkansas and Florida are the only Southern states that still allow citizens to place questions on the ballot, but Republican lawmakers there want to erect new barriers to this form of direct democracy.

October 29, 2021 - The Republicans who control legislatures in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas have drawn congressional maps that favor their party and disadvantage voters of color. Meanwhile, an independent redistricting commission has faltered in its effort to draw new election maps in Virginia.

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.

August 20, 2021 - A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists finds an "alarming" level of concentration in Arkansas's chicken industry. Facing South spoke with the report's author about the implications of such high levels of concentration for farmers, workers, and consumers, and possible policy solutions.