Before the pandemic, the South was already a place where child-care workers are paid less, even when wages are adjusted for cost of living, than the national average. Many places in the South, particularly rural areas, don’t have enough child-care slots for the number of eligible children. This year, Reckon obtained data on child-care program closures in Tennessee, Alabama, [...]
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nancy Sylvester watched with growing concern as child care centers around her own center in Jackson, Miss. closed their doors – for good. “There was one center that was just down the street, the largest center in this area, which had been [...]
There's power in art. Power to persuade. Power to inform. Power to move. And the powerful work of Ashley M. Jones is deeply rooted in stories and images from the American South. Today on the Reckon Interview, we discuss Ashley's latest collection "Reparations Now!" the title of which comes from [...]
If you’ve followed Reckon for a while now, you already know that we’ve put women at the center of much of our work. If you know that, you also know why the moment we’re in now, particularly here in the South, demands not only more, wider coverage but also deeper [...]
When Nyoka Holmes, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, came home upset about a dress code enforcement day at Alabama’s Huntsville High School, her mother, Kim, knew she had to say something about the policy that she says unfairly targets girls and low-income students. Although Nyoka wasn’t one of the [...]
More than two weeks after hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, residents in New Orleans and in smaller coastal communities are still suffering. Down in the bayou, a couple of hours south of New Orleans, homes have been entirely pushed off their stilts and residents are in full survival mode. [...]
Before the late 1980s, most academics cited the start of the Civil Rights Movement as Rosa Parks’ refusal to vacate her bus seat on Dec. 1, 1955. But 95 days earlier, the death of a 14-year-old boy named Emmett Till was about to shake the movement to life. Clenora Hudson-Weems, who [...]
In June, a Kentucky woman asked the Southern Baptist Convention to investigate sexual abuse by ministers within the denomination. Now, Hannah-Kate Williams is suing the powerful evangelical religious organization, and its key leaders, alleging church leaders failed to adequately investigate Williams’ own reports in 2019, defamed her as a liar and “conspired to protect [...]
In the first five games of Olympic play, Alabama-native Haylie McCleney scored four of Team USA's nine runs.
Kendra Gayle Lee remembers the first time she read a book with an LGBTQ character who got to live “happily ever after.” “It was the first book that I read where the lesbian didn't have to die at the end,” Lee said, referring to Rita Mae Brown's 1970s lesbian coming-of-age [...]
