The South's progressive cities have a target on their back.
With Donald Trump now the presumptive Republican nominee for president in the race against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, attention is now turning to the impact the White House contest will have on down-ticket races, including state offices in the South.
Two years ago this month, more than 300 residents of Kure Beach, North Carolina (pop. 2,000), packed town hall to voice their anger with then-Mayor Dean Lambeth's decision to sign a letter supporting seismic testing for offshore oil and gas deposits. The letter was written by America's Energy Forum, a project of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s leading trade association.
The organizers of Freedom Summer did not just have a one-year plan. The summer of 1964 was always meant to be the beginnings of a multi-faceted, multi-year campaign. Any modern movement to build a more inclusive Black Belt needs to be seen as a generational battle.
Operation Jumpstart plans to carry out a thousand "projects" across North Carolina by Election Day: trainings, forums and other outreach to people and groups needing help to navigate the state's bewildering -- and potentially intimidating -- laws that aim to restrict voting rights.
What kind of South do we want? The Voting Rights Act was a key engine of Southern progress, leveling the political playing field but also improving the South's image and economic success. If conservatives push too hard, it may help tilt the electorate in ways that helps score some quick political victories. In the short term, these attacks could be a spark to mobilize African-American, Asian-American, Latino, young and urban voters to head to the polls in 2014.
Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis at the Institute for Southern Studies argue in the latest issue of The American Prospect that a state can become both more progressive and more conservative at the same time, and that is actually happening in North Carolina -- creating an especially turbulent moment in the state's political history.
If current trends hold, all Southern states will be transformed in some way by the changing blend of Southerners, new and old.
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