Southern History and Civil Rights in the News 5 March 2021
Southern History and Civil Rights in the News
5 March 2021
As Black History Month ended this past week, many outlets were capping their coverage with retrospectives. WMC5, CBS affiliate in Memphis, added their own with “The Fight for Equality: Then and Now.” USA Today ended their Black History Month coverage with the story of the Columbia (TN) race riot of 1946, an event that some argue sparked the classic civil rights movement.
With the end of Black History Month comes the beginning of Women’s History Month, and the Southern Poverty Law Center kicks off the celebration with a feature on Black women shaping the future of the civil rights movement. 4WWL, CBS affiliate in New Orleans has e new series, “You Ought to Know” about lesser-known women fighting for civil rights. Oretha Castle Haley is featured in the series this week.
The Citizen-Times of Asheville, NC reports that Great Smoky Mountains National Park is moving forward with the African American Experience Project in order to discover and bring to light the missing stories of African Americans from the park’s environs. First as enslaved workers and later as workers building the park itself, Africans and African Americans have played a pivotal role in the area which has been ignored up until now.
Clarksdale, MS, long known as a haven for blues musicians, is also seeking to put their history as a site for civil rights action before the public with a new African American Heritage Map that lists over a dozen sites of interest, as reported by Memphis CBS affiliate WREG. Clarksdale is also the home of Rev. Edward Thomas, who spoke to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting about the intersection of the Capitol insurrection and the long history of racist medical practices, as well as how that combination has led to vaccine skepticism among people of color in the US and abroad.
The Atlanta Daily World has a story about four new life-size bronze sculptures that have been unveiled on Atlanta’s Martin Luther King, Jr Drive as part of the MLK Innovation Corridor Project. The statues memorialize civil rights leaders Dr. Rita Samuels, Dorothy Bolden, Rev. Hosea Williams, and WA Scott, founder and longtime publisher of the Daily World, one of the first Black newspapers to successfully transition to daily publication.
Election season is long over, but as The Washington Post reports, the legal battles over future elections are heating up. The US. Supreme Court is now hearing arguments on several voting rights cases that could have long-term effects on what is left of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Until next week, stay well,
Michele “Scout” Johnson
Editor, H-South
This series of weekly posts to H-South, “Southern History and Civil Rights in the News,” aims to track informed public discussions of southern history and civil rights. To recommend a reading, please email Dr. Michele Johnson at editorial-south@mail.h-net.org.
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