Vol. 25, No. 3: Left/Right

Vol. 25, No. 3: Left/Right

In this issue, we look left, right, and everywhere in between.

Front Porch: Left/Right

by Harry Watson

“The South has seen its share of revolutions before.”

Things That Don’t Fit

by Joseph Crespino

“Right field, where perennial All-Star Hank Aaron played, was, first, the site of the Sermon on the Mount and, later, Golgotha.”

Gird Up, Get Up, and Grow Up

by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Tim Tyson

"These state bodies, we've trained them to do what we did here with Moral Monday. And that's what's power."

Carving A Path For Those Who Will Follow

by Stacey Abrams, Valerie Boyd

"So often we're told to run despite who we are, and I am running because of who I am."

Unsettling Histories of the South

by Angela Hudson

"Embracing [indigenous] societies as an essential part of southern history may confound the question 'Where is the South?' but also asks provocatively, 'When is the South?'"

Reckoning with Southern Baptist Histories

by Alison Collis Greene

"Though race is not present in biblical depictions of slavery, white southerners' reading of scripture presupposed a natural social hierarchy in which Christianity, whiteness, and masculinity stood at the top."

To Talk About Power Is to Talk About Shame

by Janisse Ray, Amy Wright

"[Activism] is rooted in the needs of a community, in the imagination, in the history of activists who serve as role models and inspirations, in art, in centuries of intellectual thought regarding power."

The Talk

by Sonny Kelly

"How do you explain to a seven-year-old his all-encompassing blackness?"

What I’m Doing Is for Them

by Rosa Ortez-Cruz, Lori Fernald Khamala

"At first, I thought three months was forever. I counted ninety-six days; "Oh God, that's insane!" But imagine, now, I've already been here for more than four hundred days."

We’re Talking Human Lives Here

by Jan Rader, Elaine McMillion Sheldon

"Open your eyes, talk to us. We'll tell you what we did wrong. We'll tell you what we did right."

This Twinkling Mortal World

by Joe Shay

"We're not that different and this life is short."

The People of Jackson Are Ready

by Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Kiese Laymon

"We have to figure out how we go around [the mountain] or, like Hannibal, how we just run the troops up."

A Beautiful Queerness

by Holly Christopher Lewis, Ocean Eerie

This interview first appeared in the Left/Right Issue (vol. 25, no. 3: Fall 2019).

The Great-Granddaddy of White Nationalism

by Diane Roberts

"You see Dixon's handiwork in the breathless roundup of atrocities allegedly committed by people of color against white people in Brietbart News's 'Black Crime' section; and in the attacks on individuals such as Philandro Castile, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice."

Troubled Inheritance

by Emily Ruth Rutter

"Unsurprisingly, there was no conversation around my dinner table as a child about the racist politics and actions of the Kitchin brothers."

For Abraham Lincoln

by Jonathan Farmer

"tenderheartedness was breached"

Wild Heirloom

by Skylar Gudasz

"The South is a ghost, a ghost is a lie . . . "