alabama

Alabama, Which Requires ID to Vote, Stops Issuing New Licenses in Majority-Black Counties

Jay Hathaway · 10/02/15 11:25AM

Facing a state budget reduction, Alabama’s Law Enforcement Agency opted to cut driver-licensing services at 31 satellite offices, serving 28 counties. Twelve to fifteen of the affected counties are in Alabama’s “black belt,” and every Alabama county where black people make up 75% or more of registered voters. That’s troubling because, since last year, Alabama has required government ID to vote.

Hamilton Nolan · 09/10/15 12:20PM

Montez Spradley, who was convicted of murder and spent nearly ten years in prison in Alabama—including more than three years on Death Row—has been released from prison, his conviction overturned. Gawker published a letter from Spradley in 2013.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley Won't Say Whether He Fucked a Staffer

Jordan Sargent · 09/03/15 08:55AM

Last week, Dianne Bentley filed for divorce from her husband of 50 years, Robert Bentley, who has served as the Republican governor of Alabama since 2011. While Dianne Bentley’s initial petition refers to “an irretrievable breakdown” of her marriage, several Alabama media outlets—along with many local political insiders—have put forth a much more specific explanation: Dianne Bentley came to believe that her husband had an ongoing affair with a female staffer many decades his junior. No one involved—not the wife, the husband, or the alleged paramour—have attempted to refute the allegations.

Brendan O'Connor · 08/16/15 03:00PM

“In a five-year period ending in 2010, according to a lawsuit, prosecutors in Houston and Henry Counties in Alabama used peremptory strikes to remove 82 percent of eligible black potential jurors from trials in which the death penalty was imposed.”

Today Is a Work Holiday in Alabama to Honor Jefferson Davis

Adam Weinstein · 06/01/15 08:58AM

If you needed to run yonder to Bessemer for that easement to cross Scuzz McWhorter’s field so’s you can dig up all the lead shot what gramma’s blasted out there from the kitchen porch over all these years, let it wait till Tuesday, son: Alabama done went down to the beach in honor of the Confederacy!

Alabama Man Freed After 28 Years on Death Row

Brendan O'Connor · 04/04/15 09:05AM

After being sentenced to death nearly three decades ago, Anthony Ray Hinton has been exonerated and was released on Friday. The Jefferson County district attorney's office moved to drop the case on Wednesday, after years of appeals that ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court.

The Road to Montgomery: Residents Recall the Historic Selma Marches

Ernest Wilkins · 03/21/15 11:10AM

The story of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches has been documented countless times. What hasn't been explored with the same scope is the effect these momentous events had on townspeople living in Selma during that period. Growing up, my mom shipped me to Selma every summer to stay with my grandmother, Bernice McMillian, choosing the familiar streets of where she grew up instead of letting me run wild in Chicago. It's as big a part of who I am as anything else. In the interest of posterity, I reached out to people who were around during the events of that month.

Walmart Shoplifting Suspect Escapes By Kicking Through the Ceiling

Aleksander Chan · 03/20/15 08:12AM

A suspected—and determined—shoplifter at a Walmart in Mobile, Ala. managed to escape store security Wednesday by climbing up into the store's ventilation system. From there, he crawled his way to the store's entrance, kicked through the ceiling, jumped down, and fled.

Obama: "We Know the March Is Not Over Yet"

Brendan O'Connor · 03/07/15 04:45PM

President Barack Obama delivered a speech on Saturday from the Edmund Pettus Bridge—named for a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and site of what came to be known as "Bloody Sunday"—addressing race in America. "What happened in Ferguson may not be unique," he said, "but it's no longer endemic. It's no longer sanctioned by law or custom, and before the civil rights movement, it most surely was."