About This Project:
Civil Wrongs is an investigative journalism project of the Institute for Public Service Reporting. The project includes an academic course to at the University of Memphis. In this interdisciplinary course, students examine unsolved and unresolved civil rights-related murders, police oppression and abuse, and the legacy of voter suppression, government surveillance, environmental injustice and human rights concerns. We’ll publish what we find in stories that will appear online, on public radio, and television.

Our mission is to investigate historical racial injustices in the Mid-South and analyze their effect on our present reality so that the public can make more informed decisions about our future.

For far too long, the truth about racial terror in our nation has been ignored, hidden, or downplayed. But we cannot fully heal without facing it head on.

We don’t necessarily expect to find new evidence to bring perpetrators to justice (though it could). We want to help readers understand how a past that we are prone to forget still affects us. There are so many stories that have never gotten the attention they deserve. We are committed to amplifying those stories and analyzing how they still reverberate today.

When we understand the historical root of our present problems, we are more informed about how to forge a better future.

Project in partnership with: The Institute for Public Service Reporting Memphis