southern exposure

March 12, 2021 - The Institute for Southern Studies was founded 51 years ago this week. To celebrate our birthday and commemorate our history, we're republishing an oral history from Sue Thrasher, one of the founders of the organization and an original editor of Southern Exposure magazine, the print publication that preceded Facing South.

July 18, 2020 - Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia), who became a leader in the Civil Rights Movement as a student and chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for several years before being elected to Congress in 1987, has died at age 80. In this 1980 interview with Lewis, he recalls the Nashville sit-ins and the deep faith he had in the Movement.  

July 16, 2020 - In 1988, Southern Exposure, the print forerunner of Facing South, published a speech by Segrest, a North Carolina anti-racist organizer and lesbian activist, for an issue on lesbians and gays in the South. Segrest went on to write several books, including "Memoir of a Race Traitor," and to teach college in Connecticut. Back in North Carolina again, Segrest recently talked with Facing South about the urgency of broad-based organizing in this historic moment.

June 26, 2020 - In 1978, Southern Exposure, the print forerunner of Facing South, interviewed Ingle, one of the founders of the Southern Coalition for Jails and Prisons, for an issue on prisons. Ingle continues his prisoner advocacy work today in Nashville, Tennessee, and Facing South recently talked with him about the sea changes he's witnessed in that time in both the U.S. prison system and the prison reform movement.

May 19, 2017 - For more than 50 years, Bob Hall has been a central force in the struggle for a more just and democratic South. On the cusp of his retirement, he speaks with Facing South about his history in the movement and his advice for today's organizers and activists.

August 17, 2015 - Civil rights veteran and Institute for Southern Studies co-founder Julian Bond was a staunch advocate for justice and human rights. In 1998, the Institute interviewed Bond about what progressives needed to do to bring lasting change in the South.

June 18, 2015 - The massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church calls to mind the long history of racially-motivated attacks on black congregations in the South, including a wave of church-burnings in the 1990s. The man arrested in the Charleston killings appears to share at least some aspects of the profile of the typical church arsonist.

March 9, 2015 - Viola Liuzzo died for her convictions in the 1960s freedom movement, and is the only white woman honored on the Civil Rights Memorial. But few know her story -- and why authorities conspired to keep her from being known as a hero.

March 8, 2013 - A story in a 1977 issue of Southern Exposure reported on how in the midst of the Great Depression Jessie Daniel Ames organized a mass "revolt against chivalry" that linked the anti-lynching campaign with the struggle for sexual emancipation. We share it today in honor of International Women's Day.

February 15, 2013 - With North Carolina flipping back into the Republican column, you could say that the new Solid South begins in Henderson, N.C. and ends in Valdosta, Ga., bracketed by Virginia and Florida.