Human Rights

July 2, 2020 - As the incarceration rate in urban America falls, it's still climbing in rural communities. Here's why it's rising — and how some academics and activists suggest reversing the trend.

July 1, 2020 - Against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter uprising, a recent spate of suspicious hanging deaths of Black and Brown people nationwide sparks fears about the kind of vicious white backlash against Black progress the U.S. has seen before.  

June 30, 2020 - Black Lives Matter protesters recently targeted a statue of former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, an enslaver and rapist notorious for sanctioning physical violence against enslaved people. Days later, a commission discussed removing an enormous portrait of Ruffin that looms over the state Supreme Court. 

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.

June 26, 2020 - When South Carolina's largest city ordered the removal of the statue of former U.S. Vice President turned secessionist John C. Calhoun, there were few if any Black workers on the crew. That points to contradictions that define our political moment.

June 24, 2020 - As novel coronavirus cases rise in poultry plants near the meat-processing giant's headquarters in Northwest Arkansas, family members of workers say the company takes better care of their chickens than they do their employees.

June 19, 2020 - Spurred by recent protests over police brutality, the North Carolina-based banking giant, which has a long history of racial discrimination, recently pledged to donate $1 billion over the next four years to address racial and economic inequality. But political spending by the company's employee PAC program is at odds with that goal.

June 19, 2020 - Following nationwide protests over racism, a public call by African-American driver Bubba Wallace got NASCAR to ban displays of the Confederate flag from its events. The business has seen that its customers may be growing weary of at least overt racism, and it's finally responding.

June 17, 2020 - Antoine Williams, an art professor at Guilford College in Greensboro, produces mixed media artwork informed by critical race theory. He recently auctioned off two of his works to benefit Black Lives Matter and other groups working for racial justice — part of a broader effort by the art world to take a stand against racism. What Williams hoped to sell in two weeks was gone in 30 minutes, so now he's planning his next steps.

June 17, 2020 - As he died at the hands of Minneapolis police, Floyd called out for his mother — rending the hearts of Black mothers nationwide and spurring many to take part in street protests. Some of those same Black mothers will also be taking part in the Poor People's Campaign's virtual mass rally on June 20, and they are drawing connections between police violence and policy violence.