Stories
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- Dismantling White Supremacy
Activists in Alabama city continue fight to contextualize Confederate monument
The City Council meeting on May 7 was the last straw for Camille Bennett. Three months later, that frustration materialized into a 10-by-22-foot billboard along the main boulevard running through Florence, a scenic city along the Tennessee River in the northwest corner of Alabama. The billboard depicts two council members with a message to the…
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- Dismantling White Supremacy
Advocacy and Legislative Resources
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its affiliate organization, the 501c(4) SPLC Action Fund, are public interest advocacy organizations working in the Deep South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi) to eliminate the structural racism and inequalities that fuel the oppression of Black, Indigenous and other people of color. Our policy work includes administrative…
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- Strengthening Democracy & Voting Rights
Back on the job: Alabama town’s first Black mayor reinstated, sworn into office
Editor’s note: This is the fourth part of a four-part series. Read previous entries here: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. It was a typical Friday afternoon in Newbern, Alabama, when vehicles started arriving in the parking lot across the street from the town hall complex. Outside of timber-hauling season, traffic through the center of town along State Road…
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- Eliminating Poverty and Economic Inequality
Georgia teen with dyslexia gets education assistance, thanks to SPLC lawsuit
Trinity is a lot like most 16-year-old girls. The rising high school sophomore speed-texts with her friends about everything and nothing and looks forward to the day when she can drive a car. When she is old enough, she wants to be an esthetician. What Trinity has never confided in most of her close friends…
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- Dismantling White Supremacy
A Black Florida community preserves its legacy through an oral history project
When she first heard the clatter outside her house in Royal, Florida, Etta Johnson Huff didn’t think much of it. At 70, the proud woman who lives on the same land acquired by her ancestors after the Civil War is not easily ruffled. But when she looked out her window that morning this past February, what…
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- Strengthening Democracy & Voting Rights
Newbern, Alabama, mayor officially reinstated after judge signs settlement order
Patrick Braxton, the first Black mayor of Newbern, Alabama, was reinstated to office this week after a federal judge signed a court order authorizing a settlement agreement that ends Braxton’s lawsuit against the town for improperly ousting him from office. “Plaintiff Braxton is the lawful mayor of Newbern effective the date of this order, and…
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- Eliminating Poverty and Economic Inequality
Students from SPLC’s Youth Leadership Institute win college scholarships
One afternoon in May, Isabella Dennison and Madison Thompson received a message from the manager of the Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC), Lauren Blanding. Could they join her for dinner that evening? The guests included staffers from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which built and sponsors the CRMC at its Montgomery, Alabama, headquarters. The two…
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- Strengthening Democracy & Voting Rights
SPLC launches Alabama Advocacy Institute to train, inspire grassroots activists
Castleberry is a town of 486 people in south-central Alabama where strawberries grow big and sweet. It is where life took Alesia Thomas, a Black military veteran, when her best friend needed her help, and it is where the Indiana native intends to grow old. The community known as Chestnut lies about 50 miles away,…
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- Dismantling White Supremacy
Teacher fights Florida anti-LGBTQ+ law, says ‘state can’t deny my existence’
When Katie Wood interviewed for the position of math teacher at Lennard High School in Hillsborough County, Florida, in 2021, she told the principal that she was a transgender woman and wanted to work only in a school that would make her feel welcome. “I told her that as a transgender woman, it’s really important…
