Southern History

March 13, 2014 - This week Glenn Ford, a black man wrongfully convicted of murder by an all-white jury in Louisiana, was freed after spending 30 years on death row at the state's notorious Angola penitentiary. What did he endure in a place where a federal judge has ruled conditions amount to "cruel and unusual punishment"?

February 28, 2014 - Historically speaking, African Americans have often connected questions of self-determination and equality at home with the fates of oppressed people in Latin America, Africa, and the Global South generally.

February 12, 2014 - Workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. are voting on a union this week. But contrary to some media reports, a "yes" vote wouldn't be the first unionization win for Southern auto workers.

January 31, 2014 - The South's rich musical and cultural traditions, as well the harsh realities of racist violence and injustice in the region, defined the artistic and political outlook of Seeger, who passed away on Jan. 27.

January 24, 2014 - Before he became infamous for the murder of President Lincoln, the Confederate sympathizer from Maryland was an oilman who used explosives to boost well production. The technique -- refined by another man whose Civil War experiences inspired what he called the "petroleum torpedo" -- was the rock-shattering prototype for modern hydraulic fracturing.

December 9, 2013 - Bill Allain survived some of the nastiest attacks in Mississippi's political history to be elected governor in 1983. Labor South's Joe Atkins recalls an appearance by the devout Catholic at a Pentecostal gathering two years later.

December 6, 2013 - Before Nelson Mandela became a global icon, civil rights activists in the U.S. South were bringing attention to the injustice of apartheid -- and learning from the South African struggle for freedom and justice.

December 5, 2013 - Controversy continues over an Election Day police operation in the small North Carolina town of Mount Gilead that disproportionately affected black residents. Such operations appear to violate policing best practices, but law enforcement officers involved defend their actions.

November 15, 2013 - From John C. Calhoun to Strom Thurmond, Southern politicians have shown disdain for the federal government in their efforts to protect the interests of the region's business and political elite.

November 15, 2013 - Events were held this week in Durham, N.C. to remember the groundbreaking anti-poverty work of the North Carolina Fund, which went on to serve as a model for President Johnson's War on Poverty. With poverty again on the rise in the state, what lessons might the Fund hold for today?