History
September 28, 2022 -
The famed civil rights leader who coined the phrase "environmental racism" in a North Carolina jail recently delivered the Robert R. Wilson Distinguished Lecture at Duke University Chapel in Durham. Titled "Environmental Justice: Past, Present, and Future" and shared here, his talk commemorated the 40th anniversary of protests over toxic waste dumping in a rural Black community that sparked the environmental justice movement.
September 1, 2022 -
When North Carolina tobacco companies began manufacturing cigarettes in the 1880s, they needed skilled rollers, so they turned to Jewish immigrants on strike at cigarette factories in New York City. The bosses thought the workers wouldn't dare organize in the union-hostile South, but they were proven wrong.
August 29, 2022 -
Timothy B. Tyson, a historian of the South, calls Joshua D. Rothman's "The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America" one of the best history books he's ever read.
August 11, 2022 -
In 1982, Southern Exposure printed an interview with two leaders in the fight to recognize and compensate veterans who had been exposed to Agent Orange. The PACT Act passed by Congress earlier this month expands benefits for U.S. veterans with health problems caused by exposure to the toxin.
July 21, 2022 -
Longtime labor journalist David Moberg passed away this week at the age of 78. In his memory, we're republishing a story about Mississippi poultry workers he contributed to a 1980 anthology on labor history published by Southern Exposure, the print forerunner to Facing South.
June 10, 2022 -
Facing South talked with Kim Kelly, a labor reporter and author of "Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor," about the lessons from the past her book holds for workers organizing in today's increasingly diverse South.
June 8, 2022 -
With midterm elections now underway, efforts to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions are continuing across the South.
