Ahead of tomorrow's important general elections, we sat down with Ambassador Andrew Young, civil rights leader, former Atlanta mayor, and U.S. congressman, to delve deeper into Democracy, personified by the right to vote.
Ambassador Young discusses the true power we all hold in our vote and the importance of a lifetime commitment to civic engagement. EPU encourages you to head to the polls tomorrow and exercise your right to VOTE!
We recently announced our third cohort of Unum Fellows that focuses on young leaders across the South. The Youth Cohort of the Unum Fellowship program consists of twenty 18-24-year old college students from sixteen southern academic institutions. The Fellowship program will equip the young leaders with resources, training, and technical expertise to develop and execute a project addressing racial and/or economic disparities on their school campuses or within their broader community.
Learn more about the Unum Fellows Youth Cohort HERE.
EPU is pleased to welcome Otis Pickett as our inaugural Eminent Scholar. The EPU Eminent Scholars program engages experts to advance narrative change and community dialogue that addresses systemic racism in America with Southern audiences.
Currently, Otis is the University Historian at Clemson University in South Carolina, where he serves as a resource on issues of historic interpretation, representation and commemoration for the Clemson community and is responsible for compiling and disseminating new scholarship relating to Clemson’s past. Prior to his role at Clemson, Otis was an associate professor of history at Mississippi College in Clinton, MS. Pickett also served as the institution’s director of undergraduate and graduate programs in Social Studies Education. Prior to joining Mississippi College in 2013, Pickett was a clinical assistant professor of teacher education at the University of Mississippi’s Tupelo campus. He earned his doctorate in U.S. History from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., and holds Master of Arts degrees in American History from the University of Charleston and the Citadel. Pickett earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Clemson.
Pickett has articles published in The Journal of African American History, the Native South, the Southern Quarterly, the Journal of the South Carolina Historical Association and has contributed book chapters for several books including Southern Religion, Southern Culture: Essays Honoring Charles Reagan Wilson (University Press of Mississippi, 2018).
In partnership with the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), EPU released “The Role of Religion in Creating More Inclusive Public Spaces.” The report presents findings from a major new national public-opinion survey that explores American attitudes and provides important new insights into how Americans view Confederate monuments, their attitudes toward creating inclusive public spaces, and their beliefs about the role of race and racism in America.
Highlights:
73% of Americans believe Confederate monuments should be changed or removed.
96% of Americans believe public spaces should be more welcoming to people of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities.
90% of Americans support efforts to tell the truth about the history of slavery, violence, and discrimination.
76% of Americans feel a sense of pride when they see their community’s diversity celebrated in public monuments and art.
To read the full report and watch the livestream video of the report launch event click here.
"While Western governments have long granted rights and assigned legal protections according to the supposedly objective criteria of chronological age, in practice, assessing age has been far more subjective — and the determination has always privileged some children while discriminating against others. Adult authorities often have used a functional age, filtered through categories of race, class, gender or ability, to make decisions about children and youths that are at odds with their chronological age — what scholars call a “double age.”
Read the full article HERE.
“'Any community that is suffering from lack of infrastructure maintenance is dealing with the same problem, maybe just on a different scale,” Toney said. “But across the nation, with …. poor communities that are often Black, brown, Indigenous and on the frontlines of the climate crisis, we see the same thing happening over and over again.'”
Read the full article HERE.
"Many Appalachian people have had this experience. But now it’s happening much more often. We are all victims of climate change."
Read the full op-ed HERE.
America’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid?
Read more about the book HERE.
Questions? Contact us at info@unumfund.org.
