Message from Margaret Huang, Former President & CEO
With so much on the line for our communities and a historic election on the horizon in 2024, it was critical that our efforts to advance racial justice in the Deep South were strategic, innovative and impactful.
We had to be clear-eyed about the forces we were up against and remember that movement work is always a process of progression and retrenchment. Unfortunately, we were — and continue to be — in a time of retrenchment. But we remained committed to protecting our hard-won rights while pushing our ideals forward.
We kicked off the year by fighting at the state and federal levels to secure social safety nets and make sure that people have the resources they need to take care of themselves and their families. An organization-wide effort, for example, led to Louisiana and Alabama appropriating millions of dollars to fund school meals for children during the summer. We also helped community members as they organized to hold their officials accountable — like in Gulfport, Mississippi, where residents influenced the city’s proposal for community development funds, ensuring the budget equitably supported the most under-resourced areas for the first time in decades.
In 2024, we saw hate and antigovernment extremist groups continue to lay the groundwork to infiltrate politics and governance and enact their dangerous ideology into law. Pulling from the playbook of these groups, some lawmakers not only pushed their extremist agenda in legislation, but also spread disinformation, peddled conspiracy theories and preyed on people’s fears and uncertainty. These tactics were particularly evident in the 2024 elections.
With the election top of mind, we deepened our commitment to civic engagement and mobilization in our key states. In November 2023, Mississippi nearly elected a progressive governor. The race was the closest it has come to that outcome in more than two decades, decided by a slim 26,619 votes. That number can be accounted for in the state’s anti-democracy efforts, like the removal of thousands of voters from the rolls. That number is also evidence of the new emerging majority in the South — evidence that change is within our grasp.
It’s the possibility for change that motivated the launch of our bilingual voter engagement campaign, The South’s Got Now | Decidimos. Through the campaign, we educate and energize young people of color in the Deep South as they build power as changemakers in our democracy.
As we set out to plan the campaign, we knew it would only be effective if young people of color defined the goals themselves, especially young people in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. These states have for too long been dismissed as not worthy of attention or investment. But as history has made clear, this region is so often the birthplace — and the bellwether — of progress. And young Black and Latinx people have always been at the forefront, making history.
Alongside our voter engagement efforts, we continued to protect and preserve democracy. In this hostile environment for voting rights, we successfully led on litigation to block a voter suppression law in Alabama, push back on voter purges, and ensure absentee voters in Georgia had time to complete their ballots after receiving them late.
While voter engagement was a was a leading priority in 2024, our Legal Team also filed lawsuits to protect the rights of children with disabilities, ensure reproductive justice for pregnant people in the South and fight the criminalization of people because of their income level, among other crucial issues. We are also proud of how we chipped away at systemic injustice and aligned with our impact areas: dismantling white supremacy, strengthening democracy, eradicating poverty and ending unjust imprisonment.
I hope you spend some time reading through this report and learning about how the SPLC is meeting this historic moment — whether in the courts, alongside our partners or in our communities. We’re grateful for your ongoing support and commitment to building a multiracial, inclusive democracy in the South and beyond.
Margaret Huang
Former President and CEO, SPLC
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Illustration by Chiara Vercesi.