Stories
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- Eliminating Poverty
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Tour highlights race-based poverty and inequity across Mississippi Delta region
Interstate highways have dramatically compressed parts of the United States. But when you get off the big federal roadways, the ground unfurls for miles in every direction. Nowhere is that truer than driving into the Mississippi Delta. The green mile markers and clip-clop of expansion joints give way to huge expanses of farmland, the occasional…
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- Strengthening Democracy & Voting Rights
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Vote Your Voice: Florida Justice Center critical to returning citizens
J.S. showed up at the Fort Lauderdale office of the Florida Justice Center (FLJC) this past fall to find out if he was qualified to vote in the presidential election. A 50-year-old Black man, J.S., whose name has been abbreviated in this story to protect his identity, had been out of prison for years after…
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- Strengthening Democracy & Voting Rights
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Alabama’s newly elected Black member of Congress stands on shoulders of family
Shomari Figures has lived his entire life in the shadow of public service. His uncle was an assistant U.S. attorney. His father, Michael Figures, was a civil rights lawyer who served in the Alabama Senate for 18 years. When his father died in 1996, his mother won his seat and took up the fight for…
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Westside Atlanta entrepreneur heads SPLC project to build office complex there
Before it can build the springboard for the community outreach it envisions for its offices in Atlanta, the Southern Poverty Law Center is taking a community first approach. Who better than someone who has spent two decades doing just that? To bring to reality its dream of a vibrant office campus that will help…
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Mother, son fight back against discriminatory school discipline in Georgia
E.C. turned 15 last September. He wasn’t at school, where he always celebrated his birthday with friends and ate pizza and cupcakes that his mother brought. Instead, he was at home in Georgia, isolated from his schoolmates and forced to take virtual learning during a nearly six-month punishment meted out by the Walton County, Georgia,…
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- Voting Rights – AL
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First-time voters at historically Black Alabama university react to Trump’s win
On the night of the presidential election, Kayla McCray felt anxious. The contest between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris was the first federal election in which the 20-year-old Alabama State University (ASU) student had ever voted. The historically Black university (HBCU) was holding a watch party on campus. McCray peeked in…
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- News
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Director of new SPLC Georgia state office ‘there to listen,’ forge bonds
The town of Sandersville sits near the center of Georgia, its rolling hills home to vast ancient deposits of the soft, white powder called kaolin. It is also the hometown of another local find, Yterenickia Bell, who in May launched the new Georgia state office of the Southern Poverty Law Center. While born of the…
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Received a racist post-election text? Report it here
Summary of Incident & Harm: Post-election, many young Black people, Latinos and LGBTQ+ individuals have been targeted with hateful and racist text messages. We strongly condemn this bigotry and harassment. Rest assured, the SPLC has launched a rapid response investigation to find the source of these attacks. If you have received such a message, we…
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Community advocates influence Gulfport, Mississippi, development plans
The city hearing in Gulfport, Mississippi, seemed to include all the elements of responsive local government. There was the full, seven-member City Council sitting at a semicircular dais in the front of the chamber. There were citizens from across Mississippi’s second-largest city filling the rows of seats. There was a city-contracted attorney and a consultant…
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- Voting Rights – GA
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SPLC organizers spend last hours of election getting out the vote in Georgia
In the video: SPLC President and CEO Margaret Huang and Yterenickia Bell, the SPLC’s state director for Georgia, canvassed an apartment complex in Mableton, Georgia, on Election Day. Despite millions of people voting early in Georgia, there were still millions of voters remaining on Election Day who could vote but had not despite the polls…
