Julia Scott is disappointed. Despite a judge granting her and other Gullah Geechee residents in St. Helena Island, South Carolina, access to the centuries-old Big House Cemetery, they must give the property owners — who put up a gate to block the entrance — written notice first. “It’s a start, but I am not pleased […]
South Carolina
Posted inEnvironmental Justice
A Rural S.C. County Quietly Approved a $2B Data Center During the Winter Storm
As a rare winter storm bore down on South Carolina, bringing conditions that historically paralyze the state for days, local officials in a rural county quietly pushed through a massive $2.4 billion data center without most residents knowing it was even on the table. “There was a public meeting, which most were unaware of,” Jessie […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Politics & Policy, Rural Issues
After a White Town Rejected a Data Center, Developers Targeted a Black Area
In December, on a two-lane road not far from the ACE Basin, a protected ecosystem and wildlife refuge in South Carolina, Paul Black drove past St. Paul AME Church and the cemetery where his wife’s grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother are buried, then slowed as the trees opened onto the piney tract. Black is an environmental […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
The Voting Rights Act Turns 60. Its Future Has Never Looked More Fragile.
Khadidah Stone will never forget the day in 2023 she learned that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld voting rights in her home state of Alabama. She was in a store when her phone buzzed, flooded with messages. “I was standing in the aisle crying,” she recalled. “And the guy at the front of the store […]
Posted inCulture, History
South Carolina’s Gullah Geechee Are Denied Their Right to Bury Their Loved Ones
For generations, Mary Mack’s family has offered free burial plots to the bereaved families on St. Helena Island. It’s an ancestral calling and a tradition. Spanning 64 square miles, the island on the coast of South Carolina is home to one of the largest remaining Gullah Geechee communities in the southeast U.S. Surrounded by creeks, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Some Mother Emanuel Families Say the Focus on Forgiveness Has Cost Them Justice
Malcolm Graham says that his sister’s body was still in the morgue when he noticed that people were rallying around the importance of forgiving her killer. A librarian who loved her community, Cynthia Graham Hurd was one of the nine Black worshippers who were fatally shot on June 17, 2015, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Incarceration
The Case of Brittany Martin: Punished Twice for the Same Incident
After spending more than two years in two different prisons in two different states, Brittany Martin believed her fight with the criminal legal system was finally over. She walked out of a South Carolina prison just before Thanksgiving, reunited with her family, and began to rebuild her life. But just three weeks later, the 37-year-old […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Technology
America’s Digital Demand Threatens Black Communities with More Pollution
Ninety years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and South Carolina Gov. Ibra Blackwood worked together to bring electricity to rural South Carolina. But to build the power plant that would make it happen, they destroyed the homes of 900 Black sharecropping families. With them, 6,000 graves — including those of formerly enslaved people — were […]
Posted inCourts, Criminal Justice, Incarceration
Brittany Martin, Convicted for Protesting Police Brutality, Is Home at Last
She’s home. Brittany Martin, the South Carolina woman who spent nearly four years in prison after being arrested at a George Floyd protest in June 2020, has been released. Martin, 36, had been separated from her five children and husband for nearly 1,000 days before her release on Wednesday morning. She was transferred from the […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Partner Content, Politics & Policy
She Was Accused of Murder After Losing Her Pregnancy. This South Carolina Woman Now Tells Her Story.
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — Amari Marsh had just finished her junior year at South Carolina State University in May 2023 when she received a text message from a law enforcement officer. “Sorry it has taken this long for paperwork to come back,” the officer wrote. “But I finally have the final report, and wanted to see […]