Southern Exposure magazine to celebrate 50 years of investigations, oral histories

“We were not journalists as much as we were activists." 

These are the words of Bob Hall, founding editor of Southern Exposure as he remembered his role at the magazine.

The award-winning publication is produced by the Institute for Southern Studies and will celebrate its 50th print anniversary this Saturday at Wilson Library. The event is in collaboration with UNC's Southern Historical Collection,  North Carolina Collection and Center for the Study of the American South. 

"This honors the beginning of the magazine, but really, it honors this moment in North Carolina organizing. And also the print culture of the movement, the importance of independent journalism, the importance of arts and culture, the importance of documenting sort of Southern legacies," Biff Hollingsworth, collecting and public programming archivist at Wilson Library’s Southern Historical Collection, said. 

The first part of the event will be a private opportunity for veteran editors and contributors of the magazine to reunite and remember their work. Then, there will be a panel discussion open to the public. 

In the five decades since its founding in 1973, the magazine has tackled various long-term projects in the South that required extensive investigation. 

“It had its one foot in the past and one foot looking towards Southern futures,” Hollingsworth said.

At the time Southern Exposure was founded, Hall said that many "liberal" newspapers in the South supported the Vietnam War and opposed Black Power. Southern Exposure’s aim was to create an “agitational and innovative” project that would have a lasting impact.

Along with pioneering research on corporate power, discriminatory practices and environmental protection, the magazine was among the first to publish in-depth oral histories from the Great Depression era. These oral histories focus on the stories of the past and how they shaped the current culture. 

Southern Exposure was also involved with a 1970s campaign that worked against the textile corporation J.P. Stevens — archives editor of "Southern Exposure," Olivia Paschal, said. 

Leah Wise, one of Southern Exposure’s original editors, was the fourth executive director for the community action group Southerners for Economic Justice. This group worked to pledge support to textile mill workers and other organizations in lobbying for stricter federal cotton dust standards. 

In 1973, Southern Exposure covered the Brookside Mine strikes against Duke Power in Harlan County, Kentucky. The coverage focused on the stories of mine workers, along with their families at home. Chip Hughes, editor of Southern Exposure at the time, even slept in a tent during the strike. 

The magazine's summer 1989 issue investigated the South’s poultry industry. Paschal said it was one of the first attempts by the media to consider the poultry industry as a corporate and exploitative agribusiness, as the magazine looked into the industry's role in shaping the Southern economy and treatment of workers.

The issue won a National Magazine Award for public interest journalism in the following year. The magazine has also been awarded two George Polk Awards for regional and magazine reporting in 1978 and 2003, respectively.

This award-winning coverage is an example of the digitized archives of Southern Exposure that will be displayed at the 50th-anniversary event. Additionally, about 150 boxes of reporting records, research and communication will be available to be viewed. 

The UNC Southern Historical Collection is home to archival materials of almost every issue of Southern Exposure.

Some of the magazine's founding members include Hall, Wise and Sue Thrasher, co-founder of the ISS. Among others, Founding Director of UNC's Southern Oral History Program Jacquelyn Dowd Hall was also a contributor.

Attendees of the event will include current activists, researchers and journalists whose work is deeply ingrained in the South, Ben Barber, democracy program coordinator at the ISS, said.

“Social change in history has not come from the top down, it has always come from the bottom up,” he said. “I think that is one of the main things that Southern Exposure has tried to show us within their writing, within their research and within their advocacy.”

The 50th-anniversary event will begin March 11 at 1 p.m. in Wilson Library and will also be available over Zoom.

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CORRECTION: Leah Wise was the fourth executive director of Southerners for Economic justice, not the founder. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for this error.

CLARIFICATION: Olivia Paschal is the archives editor for Southern Exposure specifically, a part of Facing South. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for this error.

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