Civil Wrongs

<p>In this Memphis neighborhood, the economic potential of its future is just as important as the telling of its past. The Klondike Smokey City Community Development Corporation has been working for years to provide...

<p>The 1968 Memphis sanitation worker's strike was a pivotal point in the Civil Rights Movement. It eventually led to the fatal shooting of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel. Local activists say that...

<p>In 1961, Dwania Kyles was among the first group of 13 Black children to integrate Memphis’ public school system. To aid in her own healing from that traumatic experience, she became a certified wellness coach. Now...

<p>Next time you’re walking down South Main Street in Memphis and find yourself in front of one downtown’s longest-standing art galleries, look down. You might learn something. </p><p>Miniature paintings by artist...

<p>When pundits and politicians talk about rural America, it’s often another way of saying white America. </p><p>But that would also be a misperception, according to the Brookings Institution. The share of people of...

<p>This season, we're doing something different by sharing some of the positives that have come from people’s efforts to remember the past. Check back for more episodes.</p><p><br></p>

<p>Black farmers have lost 90% of the land they once owned since 1920. Oral histories of the massacre say land was stolen from victims and survivors. One local group, the Elaine Legacy Center, is digging into the...

<p>The Elaine Massacre of 1919 was one of the deadliest in American history and for decades, its story was suppressed. Descendants of this tragedy say they are still feeling its effects in their small rural Arkansas...

<p>Starting in the immediate aftermath, a "hush mouth" campaign ensued across Phillips County, Arkansas to stifle the telling of the massacre. Now, there are few places that tell the story, and those that do are...

<p>The racist caricature that Black people are inherently lazy and morally corrupt underscored the perceived authority of Earle, Arkansas sheriff’s deputy Paul Peacher to haul men off to forced labor in the 1930s...

<p>Slavery was still happening in eastern Arkansas in the 1930s — seven decades after Emancipation.</p> <p>Efforts to seek better pay and working conditions by the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, a rare interracial labor...

<p>Though the Memphis Massacre is virtually excluded from U.S. history education, it has had a long-lasting impact on civil rights, including a direct correlation to the passage of the 14th Amendment. </p> <p>“I think...

<p>The ruthlessness of the white mobs during the massacre extended to sexual violence. Multiple women were raped over three days, including five who were brave enough to testify to the congressional committee. It’s...

<p>The white mobs were led by a specific subset of people: Police officers who were mostly Irish immigrants. At the time, Irish immigrants were viewed as inferior to other white Americans. And with the emancipation of...

<p>A year after the Civil War, in May 1866, widescale violence erupted in Memphis. White mobs led by police brutalized the Black community, beating and shooting any Black person they could find, but especially targeting...