Dominika Parry never stopped fighting for Jackson, Mississippi, residents even after the Trump administration terminated a multibillion-dollar program last year meant to help the Black city still reeling from a water crisis. For years, if water did flow out of Black households’ faucets in Jackson at all, it was often brown. It left elders and […]
Alabama
Posted inBlack Farmers, Partner Content, Rural Issues
How One Black Family Has Held Onto Their Land for Generations
It is early in the planting season for Elister Charleston and his family. And, as he has come to know in his eighty years of farming, before the faithful sun breaks into the sky, before he gets himself cleaned up and dresses in his blue jeans, shirt and cap, before he makes his black coffee […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Politics & Policy, Redevelopment, Transportation
From the South to the Coasts, New Highways Are Threatening Black Land
Timothy Williams’ family has lived in the same community for over 150 years, but he is afraid that they are one big storm away from losing it all. Eight years ago, the Alabama Department of Transportation widened the highway that runs just a few yards from Williams’ home in Shiloh. Since then, every time it […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
The Plaintiffs Behind Alabama’s Voting Rights Case Are Ready to Fight Again
This story first appeared on For the Record: A Black Oral History Archive. The archive is a collection of over 100 firsthand stories of Black life in America. MONTGOMERY, Alabama — Evan Milligan was visiting Berlin when he learned that he had won a voting rights case against the state of Alabama at the U.S. Supreme […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
Black Alabama Voters Lose Again as Supreme Court Greenlights Map
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Alabama to use a map that eliminates a district where Black voters had the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. “The Supreme Court’s decision gives cover to Alabama and others to deliberately and openly discriminate against Black voters without fear of any consequence,” Deuel Ross, the […]
Posted inCulture, News, Politics & Policy
‘We’re Not Going Back’: Black Voters March in Alabama Against Redistricting
MONTGOMERY, Alabama – Roy Wilson remembers marching with his family before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. More than 60 years later, the 77-year-old answered the nationwide call to action this weekend as hundreds mobilized across Selma and Montgomery against the direct attacks on the voting protections he fought for as a teenager. […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy, Rural Issues
The Alabama Town That Blocked Its First Black Mayor Now Has Another
Read Capital B’s continuous coverage on Newbern, Alabama, and the first Black mayor’s fight to serve. The rural Alabama town that once ousted its first Black leader has now appointed its second Black mayor and first woman to hold the office. The historic appointment of Barbara Patrick in Newbern on Feb. 1 comes after Patrick […]
Posted inBlack Farmers, Rural Issues
This Alabama Cattle Rancher Is Ready for a Legal Battle to Protect His Land
SELMA, Alabama — On a sunny, humid summer afternoon, Willie Palmer Jr. gathered his cows under a tree for feeding time. He watched as they roamed the grounds, passing by a slew of vehicles, a shed, and barn on his 20-acre property. As the animals feasted, Palmer stood quietly for a moment, taking in the […]
Posted inEconomic Development, Environmental Justice, Politics & Policy
From Mississippi to Maryland, Black Communities Are Taking On Big Tech
When word spread through Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year that a tech giant was eyeing hundreds of pine-covered acres at the city’s edge, Benard Simelton’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The longtime NAACP leader had fielded calls about toxic air and shuttered steel mills before, but this, he said, was new to him. At first, the […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
Black Alabama Mayor Once Blocked by White Town Leaders Wins Reelection
NEWBERN, Ala. — On a quiet, sunny morning, Gabrielle Cook and her 20-year-old son Mark Cabil walked into their town hall to cast their ballots in an election that would decide the future of their rural Alabama town. For the first time in Newbern’s history, the citizens of this majority-Black town got to participate directly […]
