Essay
Breaking through the discord, there was a harmony: hundreds of tables and chairs scratching against the floor. Trays of corn bread sliding across the tables, uneaten. It was not just the sound, but the smell, too. Spoiled meat and heaps of scraps sunk into the walls amid the summer’s heat. On any day, the carefully »
Interview
“We’re not going to go anywhere if we can’t win the people.” This interview was conducted in early January 2021, ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic and on the eve of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Jared Ware, cohost of the podcast Millennials Are Killing Capitalism and independent journalist covering twenty-first-century prisoner movements, speaks with incarcerated organizer »
Memoir
“I’m surrounded by many brilliant minds, any one of them fully capable of doing what I’ve done and more if given the opportunity.” The presentation at the Making and Unmaking Mass Incarceration (MUMI) conference in December capped a very productive 2019, which, judging by the current state of our society, can only be considered exceptional. »
Art
Oakland-born artist Adrian L. Burrell is a light worker. Using lens-based media that require light to function (primarily photography and film), the artist has traversed various “Souths”—from the local to the global, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Nicaragua, Brazil, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa—to spotlight instances of struggle and self-determination. Burrell’s family history, along with his own »
Memoir
I use art to examine not only the depths of my own mind but all that surrounds me. Locked in Dark Calm symbolizes the experience of having to process anger inside of a controlled and contained environment. It also represents a turning point in my life. To be able to move forward, it is necessary »
Essay
“We knew the state would protect white supremacy. We wanted to protect each other.” We want to tell you a story about a wildly successful community project whose time has come to an end: the Charlottesville Community Resilience Fund. The Resilience Fund was an integral point in a constellation of mutual aid efforts for community »
Essay
This special issue, the Abolitionist South, coalesced during the Black Spring protests and the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Following the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and others, precincts and cop cars burned, and calls to defund and abolish the police reverberated through the streets. In response to overcrowded prisons and »
Essay
“The phrase ‘abolitionist South’ pulls us back to the region’s traumatic and violent history of slavery and Emancipation but also anchors us in a radical present.” In this issue of Southern Cultures, we examine the abolitionist South. This phrase pulls us back to the region’s traumatic and violent history of slavery and Emancipation—brought to life most »
Interview
Atlanta used to be my hometown, and it has been much on my mind this year. In recent conversations about the future of voting, ghastly outbreaks of racist violence, or conflicts over monuments and myth, the city looms large. Although I have not lived there for almost three decades, I continue to sort through all »
Memoir
For the last couple years of her life, until she died at the age of ninety-six, my grandmother Lala saw and heard ghosts. (You may have a Nana or a Meemaw; my brother and cousins and I had a Lala.) Many of those who’ve spent time with people nearing death are familiar with this phenomenon. »
Music
On August 26, 1967, the Lads of Liverpool (a.k.a. the Beatles) yielded the no. 1 spot on Billboard’s pop chart to an unknown musician. Mississippian Bobbie Gentry’s iconic song, “Ode to Billie Joe,” remained in that space for four weeks. During that time, her audience latched onto what seemed to be a mystery in the »
Photo Essay
America’s origin myth is prevalent on the three peninsulas that form the western shores of Virginia—from George Washington’s Birthplace on the Northern Neck to the Mattaponi tribe’s museum in King William County, which exhibits a necklace that belonged to Pocahontas. Alongside those larger myths are smaller ones that compete for attention: a clock repair shop’s »