VOICES: Stacey Abrams sets her sights on vaccine access in rural Georgia

The organizer who pioneered politically transformative get-out-the-vote efforts in Georgia is now using that existing infrastructure to get some of the state's most vulnerable residents vaccinated against COVID-19. (3/23/2021)

Read More >

Revisiting the Black power dream of North Carolina's Soul City

Facing South recently spoke with Thomas Healy, author of "Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia." The book documents civil rights leader Floyd McKissick's pursuit of Black opportunity in the form of a Black-led model integrated community on a former slave plantation in Eastern North Carolina, and the lessons the quest and its failure holds for today. (3/26/2021)

Read More >

The rural South lost 13 hospitals in 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the ongoing loss of hospital beds in rural communities across the South. The greatest losses were in Tennessee — among the states that haven't expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The rate of rural hospital closures in non-expansion states is six times greater than in states that expanded the program. (3/17/2021)

Read More >

VOICES: Our infrastructure failures are political failures

Water being delivered by truck in Mississippi's capital city. The electrical grid collapse in Texas. The hacking of a Florida water treatment plant. All of these appear at first glance to be infrastructure failures, but at their root is a failure of politics. (3/17/2021)

Read More >

Confronting the anti-civil rights filibuster

U.S. senators are currently considering whether to eliminate, reform, or protect the filibuster. The parliamentary procedure that gives the minority outsized power has a long history of being used to undermine civil rights legislation — and it now threatens to derail a bold Democratic agenda that includes voting rights and other pro-democracy reforms.

Southern lawmakers seek new ways to criminalize protesting

In the wake of historic Black Lives Matter protests, Republican lawmakers in Southern states have introduced two dozen bills this year that could lead to new criminal charges for protesters — even peaceful ones. Most Southern states already have at least one such law on the books.