DESIGN
Pages designed, drawn and written by Mike
David Williamson Jr. of Rock Hill, South Carolina, took a stand by sitting down at a segregated lunch counter. After being arrested, Williamson refused bail, forcing a segregated government to pay to keep him behind bars and feed him for almost a month. Williamson and the "Friendship Nine" provided a template for bringing about change through nonviolent civil disobedience, and others across the South soon followed this “jail, no bail” strategy. The resulting strain on public coffers forced an end to segregated lunch counters.
David Williamson Jr.
Hezekiah Watkins of Jackson, Mississippi, has been a civil rights leader since he was a child. Mistaken for a Freedom Rider, the then-13-year-old was arrested and placed in a cell on death row with two condemned criminals. After a lifetime of leadership, Watkins, who by his own count has been arrested more than 100 times, now shares his story of hope as a guide at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
Hezekiah Watkins
Phyllis Hyatt , a friend of Williamson’s and a fellow resident of Rock Hill, proved that there’s more than one way to fight back against racial discrimination, and that every action in opposition to injustice matters. Hyatt was one of Rock Hill’s “ City Girls ” who risked life and limb to protest segregation alongside their male counterparts.
Phyllis Hyatt
Dr. Tom Ellison of Birmingham, Alabama, embodies what a lifetime commitment to social justice looks like by not just talking the talk but walking the walk. Ellison has been in the thick of the fight for equality since childhood, inspired by his minister father who was a friend and colleague of such civil rights icons as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.
Dr. Tom Ellison
Richard Gleason took a temporary leave from his job as a youth minister in public housing in Chicago to join the Freedom Riders in 1961. Gleason proves that faith can be a powerful motivator in the fight for social justice. Everyone has value and is deserving of liberties, and Gleason has devoted his life to that fact.
Richard Gleason
Voting rights are under attack across the US.
Here I took a deep dive on voter suppression efforts in Michigan.
I interviewed public officials, researched and created the final piece in my series on civil rights activists of 1961 and the lessons they have for those fighting back against voter suppression efforts today.
Voting Rights Under Attack
I drove to Kenosha to cover the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and created a full-page reaction on deadline.
Kyle Rittenhouse
A Sunshine Week look at how one news organization used open records laws to uncover the truth.
Sunshine Week
COVID-19 Vaccine
A look at Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution in Detroit
A Halloween look at Michigan’s horribly gerrymandered congressional districts.
Gerrymandering in Michigan
