A little over two weeks after Hurricane Helene turned living rooms into murky, debris-filled pools, washed away homes, and caused upward of $50 billion in damage, dozens of renters and homeowners stood outside the Buncombe County Courthouse on Oct. 17 in Asheville, North Carolina. With winter approaching and temperatures dipping into the 40s, they gathered […]
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Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice
America’s Rural South Is Paying the Price for Europe’s Energy
Treva Gear doesn’t want the forest in her town of Adel, Georgia, to be the next place “sacrificed” for someone else’s energy needs. However, a new tax credit proposed in the nation’s largest climate spending bill may make it more likely for her community and dozens of others. The credit could accelerate the construction of […]
Posted inMaternal Health, Partner Content, Rural Issues
Maternity Care in Rural Areas Is in Crisis. Can More Doulas Help?
This article was published by KFF Health News. When Bristeria Clark went into labor with her son in 2015, her contractions were steady at first. Then, they stalled. Her cervix stopped dilating. After a few hours, doctors at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia, prepped Clark for an emergency cesarean section. It wasn’t the […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy, Rural Issues
Georgia Residents React to Harris-Walz Rally in Savannah
When Brandon Byrd learned that Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz would be in his home state of Georgia to campaign this week, he responded: “It’s about damn time.” Byrd understands rural areas better than most as a native of Metter, a 30% Black town of fewer than 4,000 people. Since 2021, […]
Posted inEminent Domain, Money, Rural Issues
Rural Georgia Community Keeps Fighting Despite Railroad’s Win to Take Their Land
After a year-long legal battle with a railroad company over their land, landowners in a rural, majority-Black town in Georgia may be forced to sell their homes. In an initial decision on Monday, a Georgia Public Service Commission officer approved a proposed rail spur in Sparta. Several property owners had refused to sell the land […]
Posted inRural Issues
How Black Rural Americans Navigate Internet Issues
This is the second story in Capital B’s “Disconnected: Rural Black America and the Digital Divide” project, which explores the disparate effects of broadband accessibility on Black Americans in the rural South. This project is made possible by a grant from The Center for Rural Strategies and Grist. You can read our first story, “Digital […]
Posted inEminent Domain, Rural Issues
Why This Rural Community Is at War With a 130-Year Railroad Company
SPARTA, Ga. — On a muggy and humid afternoon in mid-September, a frustrated Mark Smith stands in the kitchen of the home he and his wife, Janet Smith, built over 30 years ago on the 600 acres his grandfather acquired in 1926. Just a few feet away, the home where Mark grew up still stands. […]
Posted inPartner Content, Politics & Policy
Public Utility Commissions Are Exceptionally White. It’s Hurting Black Residents.
As the new head of a group of conservation voters in Georgia, Brionté McCorkle wanted to sit down with regulators who oversee the state’s utilities to talk about carbon emissions. But when she got a meeting with one of those regulators, she realized there were deeper problems. The regulator she spoke with didn’t understand the […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
A Roundup of Cases Against Trump
Former President Donald Trump faces a slew of state and federal charges, including most recently charges brought against him by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., relating to the 2020 election. In the run-up to the contest and in its aftermath, when it was clear that Joe Biden would win the White House, Trump’s […]
Posted inCourts, Criminal Justice
Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers Are in Prison. The Person Accused of Protecting Them Is Now in Court.
Jacquelyn Lee Johnson, the former district attorney accused of unethically meddling in the investigation of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder in 2020, was expected to face a judge this week for arraignment on a felony charge of violating her oath of office. But the hearing in the long-awaited case has been delayed at her attorney’s request, according to court records. […]
