RAGLAND — There’s a spot along the Coosa River, not far from a dynamited lock and an Alabama Power Co. dam, where the bones of dead soldiers in pinch-toe coffins are arranged in military rows below the wooded surface of St. Clair County. Getting there requires permission, a tour guide, a mac…
One year ago, Barack Obama's presidency came to an end. His election as the nation's first black president was a major accomplishment for him and for the nation. Time will never erase that achievement.
This past year saw a Democratic political backlash nationwide, and perhaps nowhere was it felt more strongly than in the South.
Doug Jones’ unlikely victory in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election unveiled a fascinating image of Alabama’s voters, Alabama’s politics and Alabama’s core issues. Turnout mattered. Demographics of race, education and gender mattered. So, too, did the state’s historic political geography within t…
After reading a copy of my book, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, novelist Harper Lee wrote me a letter on Feb. 18, 2005, expressing her fears about the direction her beloved state was headed based on its past: “It looks like to hell if we don't get some things changed. . . . I dread the ad…
The Dec. 12 special U.S. Senate election isn’t just about Roy Moore or Doug Jones or the Republican or Democratic parties. It will be a referendum on Alabama’s reputation and integrity.
Of the two giants the United States produced in the 19th century — Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln — the former, were he to come back to life, would be impressed by the fact that the first African American president had recently been elected, but angered that his successor thought Dou…
OXFORD — Many articles have been written about the militarized equipment given to law enforcement agencies across the nation. I read constantly how police officers should reject the equipment because they are not the military. What I don’t see in print are the benefits that having such equip…
BALTIMORE — We were all in the dark, on the edge of the wooded park known as Wyman Dell, opposite the Baltimore Museum of Art. It was 2 a.m. Wednesday, and despite the presence of a couple of dozen workers in hardhats, a huge crane, a flatbed truck and a couple of other pieces of heavy machi…
I laid eyes on my great-great-grandmother for the first time this month at a family reunion in rural Noxubee County, Mississippi. My relatives and I stared in awe at a black and white photo of a woman whose eyes tell a great story.
The U.S. Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 was designed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act passed during the Obama administration. But it appears to be a hastily developed plan without the input of stakeholders who could craft legislation resulting in better and more…
The 2020 Census — a once-a-decade effort by the federal government to count every person in the U.S. — is still three years away, but recent developments at the Census Bureau have raised concerns about the accuracy of the upcoming count.
In today’s political climate, the terms “rural” and “Southern” tend to conjure up a specific image for many people — white, working class, and pro-Trump. This assumption has led many Trump opponents to reject policies aimed at aiding rural America.
Earlier this month, a day after the House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act, Ashleigh Morley visited her congressman’s Facebook page to voice her dismay.
In the movie The Cowboys, John Wayne’s phrase for not effectively using precious time was “Hurry up, we’re burning daylight.”
Just outside Portland, Maine, there’s a 15,000-square-foot warehouse that’s packed with reasons the U.S. health care system costs so much: Shelves climb floor to ceiling, stacked with tubs overflowing with unopened packages of syringes, diabetes supplies and shiny surgical instruments that r…
MONTGOMERY — On the wall of a second-floor room not far from where Alabamians once traded in human chattel are 358 glass jars of soil scooped up from all corners of the state: Toadville and Rockford, Pine Apple and Sandy Ridge, Boyd Station and Ralph, Hope Hull and Screamer, Macedonia and Browns.
FRUITHURST — As a former teacher who spent 11 years in the classroom, I always assigned homework to my students, no matter the grade level. As an administrator, I have always expected my teachers to assign homework, no matter the grade level.
On Thursday, President Barack Obama designated Anniston’s two Freedom Riders sites as national monuments.
FAIRVIEW, Ky. — Visiting the world’s tallest poured-in-place concrete obelisk is first-grade simple, as long as you can find this pinprick of a place. My advice: If you’re north of Nashville or south of Louisville, set your GPS on anything named “Jefferson Davis” and head in that direction.
President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter last Sunday to claim that he would have won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” There is no evidence that millions of people voted illegally. If there were, we’d have seen some sign of it.
In March, I was driving along a road that led from Dayton, Ohio, into its formerly middle-class, now decidedly working-class southwestern suburbs, when I came upon an arresting sight. I was looking for a professional sign-maker who had turned his West Carrollton ranch house into a distributi…
