reconstruction
September 26, 2018 -
After former Confederate states drafted progressive constitutions that allowed black men to hold office for the first time, there was violent resistance to black power at the local level. During the Jim Crow era, legislatures rewrote those constitutions to give themselves broad power to override local governments.
September 13, 2018 -
In 1868, Southern states held constitutional conventions in which recently freed black men helped eliminate vestiges of the Confederacy and draft progressive blueprints for state government. While some of the provisions survived Jim Crow, conservative politicians today are chipping away at Reconstruction's radical legacy.
August 14, 2018 -
Several lawsuits seek to keep proposed state constitutional amendments off the ballot this November — and one filed by the state NAACP and Clean Air Carolina seeks to have the racially gerrymandered legislature declared illegitimate and blocked from changing the blueprint of state government.
June 15, 2018 -
A North Carolina voter charged with violating the state's ban on voting while on probation for a felony is arguing that the policy violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
June 8, 2018 -
The United Daughters of the Confederacy didn't just memorialize Confederate veterans. It also memorialized the Ku Klux Klan and shared its ideology of white supremacy.
April 19, 2018 -
A law targeting white-supremacist terrorism is being used to sue a conservative Virginia activist who falsely accused people of voting illegally — the latest example of how the Reconstruction-era statute remains relevant today.
January 26, 2018 -
A proposed constitutional amendment would give the state legislature control over choosing judges — a power it has not had since the Civil War.
