🧵 Black children in the South who desegregated their schools endured threats & violence to push for change. Decades later, many schools are still almost as segregated as before.

“It’s heartbreaking,” - Sheryl Threadgill-Matthews, one of them, now 71. bit.ly/3KeGi0a When Black students arrived in “white” public schools, white parents opened private segregation academies.

The result: Black students in public schools, white students in the academies.

@propublica found about 300 schools that likely opened as these academies still operate.

🧵: How many of your state’s lawmakers do you think are women?

If you live in the Southeast, it might not be even 1:5.

Policy about issues like abortion, maternal health & pay equity is controlled by vastly male legislatures across the region.

propublica.org/article/state-… Example: Tennessee has fewer female legislators than 20 years ago.

Mississippi has improved 3 percentage points. South Carolina fared only slightly better.

🧵When I moved to Charleston 25 years ago, historic sites called enslaved people “servants.” They were largely ignored in the broad shadow of Confederate monuments.

Beyond the Civil War, it was hard to learn much about the city’s legacy of slavery at all. Today, as old slave cities like this one reckon with their racial histories, visitors are flocking to hear a more honest story.

“African American tourism right now is red hot, especially in the South,” said Tony Youmans, who runs two key historical sites for @CityCharleston.

Vetting Georgia’s voter rolls was once largely the domain of nonpartisan elections officials. A post-2020 change in the law enabled activists to take on a greater role.

⁦@DougBockClark⁩ found 6 right-wing activists filed 89k voter roll challenges. propublica.org/article/right-… “There is a clear imbalance of power between the individual bringing the challenges and the county and voters,” said Esosa Osa, the deputy executive director of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization.

My latest from @propublica: After the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected an abortion ban, the state’s mostly male legislators replaced the only female justice with a man. (THREAD) The result: The nation’s only all-male high court will hear critical cases about abortion.