History
November 30, 2018 -
People from outside of Mississippi might look at the latest Senate election results and decide to cut their losses. But those of us in the state have witnessed the changes that organizing has brought, and we know that a movement for liberation requires long-term commitment.
November 20, 2018 -
The lame-duck North Carolina legislature convenes Nov. 27 to write a new voter ID law after the version it passed in 2013 was struck down for targeting black voters "with almost surgical precision." The same week, the U.S. Senate could vote to confirm to a federal judgeship a lawyer who helped draft the discriminatory law.
October 31, 2018 -
When Southern state constitutions were rewritten during Reconstruction, the drafters created new limits on lawmakers and took the power to choose judges, governors, and local officials from politicians and gave it to the voters. But today, some state legislatures are chipping away at these checks and balances.
October 11, 2018 -
After the Civil War, new state constitutions drafted with the help of freedmen required former Confederate states to establish their first public school systems. But 150 years later, education advocates are still fighting to ensure that Southern states live up to their mandate to offer every student a decent education.
October 5, 2018 -
The policy prohibits the Medicaid program from covering abortion, thus denying low-income people access to abortion care.
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.