racism

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 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.

August 12, 2021 - Lawsuits brought by white farmers claiming "reverse racism" halted billions of dollars in targeted aid for Black farmers and other farmers of color provided through the American Rescue Plan. The blow has deepened distrust between the Black farming community and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a relationship troubled by a history of racial discrimination and botched settlements.

July 16, 2021 - Long before journalist Hannah-Jones' tenure fight with the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, the influential conservative policy network built and funded by millionaire businessman and GOP power broker Art Pope had turned its attention to her reporting on racism with attacks and distortions reminiscent of its dishonest treatment of climate science. Pope denied direct involvement in the tenure controversy, but his organizations' messaging carries weight in a UNC system where he's a major donor and serves on the powerful Board of Governors thanks to the Republican legislature he helped elect.

July 15, 2021 - CRT teaching bans are being imposed in states and local communities nationwide. But their distorting effects on young people's understanding of their nation's past and present will take a particularly heavy toll in the South — the heart of Black America and the repository of so much Black history.

July 7, 2021 - Geeta N. Kapur, a North Carolina civil rights attorney and UNC-Chapel Hill alumna who has a book coming out in August about the school's fraught racial history, says it should come as no surprise that journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones — a Black woman bold enough to speak truth to power — was initially denied tenure by the school and then granted it only begrudgingly. Tenure would have given her a degree of academic freedom to reveal other truths that some don't want to hear.