History

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.

March 30, 2017 - At the time of his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis, Tennessee, preparing to march with the city's striking sanitation workers. Labor protests on the anniversary of his death next week will continue the work he was doing during his final days to connect race and class.

March 24, 2017 - Florida has the harshest felon disenfranchisement law in the country, but it's now being challenged by a ballot initiative campaign led by a former felon as well as by a class-action lawsuit.

February 3, 2017 - U.S. civil rights activists didn't only address the oppression of people of color at home — they also helped strike down the country's race-based immigrant quota system that privileged Europeans. The immigration law they helped enact is now being used to challenge President Trump's Muslim ban.

January 5, 2017 - As U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama prepares for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week, civil rights groups are working to block his nomination, citing his poor record on civil rights and role in targeting African-American voting rights activists.

December 23, 2016 - In a year when it was hard to keep up with the onslaught of political news, Facing South helped to make sense of important developments and to share insights about the region. Catch up on our best reporting of 2016 with a roundup of our top stories of the year.  

December 9, 2016 - The mistrial declared this week in the case of the North Charleston police officer who shot unarmed Coast Guard veteran Walter Scott in the back following a traffic stop is part of a long history of dehumanizing treatment of Black veterans in the South that's documented in a new report.

November 11, 2016 - Adopted to appease slaveholding states, the U.S. Electoral College has discouraged expansion of the franchise and resulted in five presidents who most voters opposed — but an alternative approach is gaining momentum in the states.

October 19, 2016 - Seventy years ago this week in South Carolina, the Southern Negro Youth Congress convened the largest human rights gathering the region had ever seen. The S.C. Progressive Network is holding a public symposium on Oct. 22 looking back at that historic event. To mark the occasion, we share author and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois'  convention address, one of his last major speeches and considered one of his best.

October 4, 2016 - This Oct. 5 marks 100 years since the birth of Stetson Kennedy, the Florida writer and human rights activist who died in 2011 at the age of 94. The nonprofit foundation he launched while still alive is marking the occasion with a series of events that start this week with a biographical drama of Kennedy's life — and what a life it was.