Akwaeke Emezi: 'A dead thing sentenced to life'
Media for good trouble.
Liberation lives here.
Southern politics
Prostitution was already illegal in Louisiana. Then Republicans crafted an even more damning law used to target trans sex workers.
The Crime Against Nature by Solicitation statute, passed in an 1980s era of gay panic, unfairly targets queer sex workers to this day. Meet the New Orleans activist working to get the law repealed—and to get its victims' felony records expunged.
In Alamance County, a battle for racial justice confronts a bloody past and an uncertain future
As racial justice demonstrations erupted in large cities last year, a new awareness reached smaller towns across the country. For many in Graham, located in central North Carolina's Alamance County, the movement brought to light the long history of violence in a town where protesting is now restricted and the fight for the removal of a Confederate monument created a salient battlefield in the national conflict over race, police and power.
How Durham, North Carolina, became the first US city to ban police exchanges with Israel
A successful North Carolina campaign in solidarity with Palestine adds to a Southern legacy dating back to the Civil Rights Movement.
To the other 98%: Lessons from the nation's Black male educators
Students at the Morehouse Center for Excellence in Education interviewed Black male educators to learn how they are innovating in the virtual classroom.
Arts & Soul
Killer Mike's radical lyrics are masking reformist politics
Killer Mike is the media's go-to for thoughts on police reform. At best, his music can be a springboard into liberationist hip-hop. But an issue arises when the press ignores calls for abolition while praising his lyrics like a radical manifesto.
Author Anjali Enjeti reckons with Asian American identity in white-dominant culture
South Asian organizer Anjali Enjeti, author of two new books—Southbound and The Parted Earth—discusses the model minority myth, white Evangelical extremism, and developing radically inclusive movements.
A Prophet Without Eyes: Pauli Murray's Moment
Pauli Murray is having a moment. The potent but undersung 20th-century Civil Rights activist, legal scholar, poet, and priest suddenly seems to be everywhere—110 years after her birth.
In the face of anti-trans bills, 'Mama Gloria' is a blessing
As many Black trans women struggle to imagine life after 40 due to the violence they face, a new documentary by Black filmmaker Luchina Fisher honors the life and work of Black trans activist, elder, and legend Gloria Allen.
Race & Place
HBCUs are keeping the rest of the South safe
A combination of strict screening practices, off-campus instruction, and additional student support have left HBCUs with some of the lowest COVID-19 transmission rates across college campuses.
Salt, Soil, & Supper: The whole hog's history
Meet Dr. Howard Conyers, a mechanical engineer at NASA who lives in New Orleans but who originally hails from Manning, South Carolina. Notably, Conyers has also earned high national acclaim for his craft of whole-animal cooking.
Salt, Soil, & Supper: Food apartheid, continued
Grocery stories don't have to have policies that say they explicitly avoid Black neighborhoods to still be involved in the project of racial segregation as it relates to food.
Salt, Soil, & Supper: Call it what it is—Food apartheid
The language around how we describe the inequalities across the American landscape is always evolving. At one point, the federal government decided to describe neighborhoods or regions that lacked commutable access to grocery stores […]
Long reads
Essays & Letters
MORE STORIES
Virtual Event: Join Scalawag for Realizing Abolition
Realizing Abolition is an opportunity to gather together with others committed to challenging the existence of prisons in our society
The BAmazon Loss and the Road Ahead
What can union activists across the country take away from the high-profile defeat in the union vote at Amazon in Alabama?
Your frontlines lead our headlines.
The fall and rise of North Carolina's first Black school
C.S. Brown may no longer formally labeled a school for Blacks, but its at-risk students were mostly Black—a symbol of the story education data tell about our Black youth, recognized more for trouble than for promise.
The Jewish South is Black, too
The Leader of the Atlanta Jews of Color Council on why Black and Jewish communities must keep working together.
He thought he could be a 'good' cop. Now, he's working to end policing as we know it.
Randy Shrewsberry used to cringe when his fellow cops made racist comments—until he realized his own actions, rooted in white supremacy, were worse.
POC-led. Women-run. Southern.
In Arkansas, falling behind on rent could mean jail time
Only Arkansas permits criminal consequences for nonpayment of rent—and it has enforced the law during the pandemic. Now, some legislators want to revoke the statute.
Ending white supremacist violence will take all of us
A letter from Scalawag's Executive Director-Publisher: White supremacy is the reason that six Asian women and two others were murdered in Atlanta this week. It is the reason that Flint and Jackson don't have clean water. It is the reason Texas was without power during a deadly winter storm. It is the reason George Floyd […]