We talked to and learned from residents, including elected leaders, who are deeply committed to strengthening their communities and are working in creative ways to address issues of race and class. Our research has taught us that people place a great deal of hope in their local political leadership, particularly young leaders who openly prioritize diversity and building more inclusive systems. We also heard how leadership has the potential to set a permissive tone for perpetuating the harms of racism. Entrenched distrust and disappointment in leadership bred by persistent racial disparities and perceived lack of transparency can have a deeply harmful effect on residents’ hope for their community’s future. Our future work will ensure Southern leaders are empowered to act on issues of race and class in new ways.

The vestiges of America’s Jim Crow era are vivid to those who continue to experience them through unequal access to opportunity, democracy, safety, and protection under the law. The issues we seek to change have plagued our communities since our country’s founding. We do not claim to be the first to take an interest in breaking these barriers; rather, we are committed to supplementing the deep knowledge in this field with insights shared with us by communities across the South. We also hope to accelerate reform by building greater public awareness and influencing action around transformative policy and political change at the local, state and federal level.

Too many people in our country lack an understanding of the scale of racism present in America, including our racial history and how it still permeates today’s institutions. Racism is often narrowly defined as overt individual actions rather than systemic injustices. This is because race is not easy to discuss openly. But without doing so, scholars argue that racism will still persist. We must teach the lasting impact racism has had on our institutions and persistently advance intentional efforts toward creating racial equity. Our work will focus on empowering storytelling that highlights the impacts of racial injustice in our institutions to provide fuller context needed so that positive change happen, holding the media accountable when it broadcasts implicit racial bias in its reporting that furthers racial stereotypes, and on ensuring that our full and accurate racial history is told and not whitewashed because it is inconvenient or too difficult to acknowledge.