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Southern politics
Without paid leave, the South's COVID school policies cause a terrible trickle down for families
Nearly a dozen interviews with kids and parents in Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Texas emphasize a need to fundamentally rethink much of education—including the myth that schools operate separately from family life.
Scenes from the picket line: Kellogg workers are still on strike in Memphis and across the country
The workers standing up and fighting back at the Memphis factory are part of a wave of strikes happening across the country.
Florida's legacy of slow-rolling parole keeps thousands of people behind bars—some, for decades past their eligibility date
Kayle Smith has been eligible for parole for 10 of the 34 years he's spent in prison. The state has spent $240,000 to keep him incarcerated.
New Urbanism sells faux sustainability as a luxury on Florida's 30A
The Florida beach highway that highlights how money, sustainability, and survivability intersect as the climate crisis unfolds.
Arts & Soul
Queer Black grxl survival in the thick of it all: Aurielle Marie's Gumbo Ya Ya
Poet, essayist, and winner of the 2020 Cave Canem Poetry Prize Aurielle Marie sits down with Alysia Nicole Harris to discuss their debut collection, 'Gumbo Ya Ya.'
The Black opera that stunned America's most segregated stage
While The Met may have just staged its first opera by a Black composer, New Orleans operatists say: 'We were just waiting for y'all to catch up.'
The longest-running Indigenous radio show in Texas
Inside the studio at KNON, broadcasting the "only radio program in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where you can hear stomp music."
In photos: Afropunk 2021 is a queer, Black homecoming
The Atlanta festival is known for creating a no-hate space. After 18 months, "it's very nice to see just hella black people everywhere."
Race & Place
Requiem for the longleaf pine
'The story of longleaf is also the story of the Southern yellow pine. We've just done a really good job of telling the longleaf story.'
Mississippi's childhood lead exposure interventions don't do enough for kids
Experts say solutions aimed at reducing lead exposure from water need to be educational and environmental.
'We've come this far by faith:' Vaccines, religion, and community in Arkansas
In each of his community spaces, Reverend Kenneth B. Thomas Sr. has seen the casualties of a pandemic that is complicated, multi-faceted, and doesn't have a neat beginning or end.
You're swamped? Join the club.
Climate change is coming for all of us. What the people of the Gulf South need is solidarity, not thoughts or prayers—and certainly not your emails.
Breaking Through COVID: What data can't tell about the South's vaccine rates
The end-goal of any effort to end the pandemic should be the abolishment of a system where collective care is not center, where compassion is not heard, and where people cannot trust their…
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Scalawag's 2021 Jubilee: A southern ass evening of liberatory lit 🎉
Part book club, part kiki and allllll Southern, we're putting on a party to celebrate some of the year's best reads.
Contraband Books: What Texas prisons have against Michelle Alexander, Frederick Douglass, and Alice Walker
Bookseller Julie Poole tried to do a customer a solid by shipping books to a Mississippi prison. The process turned out to be harder than she ever imagined. How the human right to read is being restricted in Southern prisons.
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Mellon Foundation announces Scalawag as an inaugural Humanities in Place grantee
Through their new Humanities in Place program, the Foundation will invest $350,000 in Scalawag over the next two years, allowing us to further concretize and grow our transformative work.
'The rest of the world tells us that these bodies are killing us'
The author of 'Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness' in conversation about "the Black fat" and the nonbinary, trans-masculine experience.