Nikole Hannah-Jones, Segregation Now: The Resegregation of America’s Schools. ProPublica, 16 April 2014. “60 years ago [1954], the Supreme Court ruled that ‘separate but equal’ had no place in American schools. ‘Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments…. It is the very foundation of good citizenship.’ Brown v. Board, 1954. The ruling spurred years of protests, school closures, military intervention, and resistance across the South before a wave of court orders finally forced schools to integrate. Now, the South is seeing a resurgence of segregation. This is the story of schools in Tuscaloosa, Ala–where a series of backroom deals and difficult compromises have had devastating consequences.”
March 9, 2014
The ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse
Dan Barry, The ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse. The New York Times, 9 March 2014. “Toil, abuse and endurance in the heartland…. For decades [1974-2009], dozens of men with intellectual disabilities belonged to a close-knit Iowa community. They lived in an old schoolhouse, worked in a turkey plant, and frequented the local mini-mart. But [few] knew just what these men endured.”
April 7, 2013
Nevada Patient Busing: Las Vegas mental hospital used commercial buses to “dump” more than 1,500 psychiatric patients in 48 states over five years
Cynthia Hubert and Phillip Reese, Nevada Patient Busing. The Sacramento Bee, Series of 5 stories published on 7 April, 14 April, 5 May, 23 June, and 15 December 2013. “The Bee began this investigation after learning of a mentally ill man who, according to sources in the social services community, had been bused from a Nevada state psychiatric hospital to Sacramento, with a minimal supply of food and medication and without any arrangements for his treatment or housing. After locating him in a boarding home in Sacramento, The Bee pieced together James Flavy Coy Brown’s story by interviewing him at length, tracking down relatives across the country, and talking to doctors, social workers and caregivers he encountered after his arrival in Sacramento. Brown gave us permission to access his confidential medical information….”
Finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting.
Winner of the 2013 George Polk Award for Medical Reporting.
Winner of the 2013 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism.
February 23, 2012
Broken Shield: California’s unique police force fails to protect the state’s most vulnerable residents
Ryan Gabrielson, Broken Shield. The Center for Investigative Reporting. California Watch, 23-24 February, 18 May, 31 July, and 29 November 2012. “Broken Shield [is] an 18-month investigation that uncovered systemic failures at the [California] Office of Protective Services…. [It details] widespread abuses inside the state’s five developmental centers. Gabrielson found that the police force charged with protecting some of the state’s most vulnerable wards almost never gets to the bottom of the abuses.”
August 23, 2011
AP’s Probe Into NYPD Intelligence Operations: Surveillance of Muslims
Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley, AP’s Probe Into NYPD Intelligence Operations. Associated Press, multi-part series beginning on 23 August 2011 and ending on 23 October 2012. “AP’s investigation has revealed that the NYPD dispatched undercover officers into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program. Police also used informants, known as “mosque crawlers,” to monitor sermons, even when there was no evidence of wrongdoing.”
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Winner of the 2012 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Update: Matt Apuzzo and Al Baker, New York to Appoint Civilian to Monitor Police’s Counterterrorism Activity. The New York Times, 7 January 2016. “The mayor will appoint an independent civilian to monitor the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism activities, lawyers said in court documents Thursday as they moved to settle a pair of lawsuits over surveillance targeting Muslims in the decade after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The agreement would restore some of the outside oversight that was eliminated after the attacks, when city leaders said they needed more flexibility in conducting investigations. In the years that followed, the Police Department secretly built files on Muslim neighborhoods, recorded sermons, collected license plates of worshipers, and documented the views of everyday people on topics such as drone strikes, politics and foreign policy.”
December 1, 2009
Sexual Assault on Campus
Kristen Lombardi, Sexual Assault on Campus. The Center for Public Integrity. 1 December 2009. “Students found ‘responsible’ for sexual assaults on campus often face little or no punishment from school judicial systems, while their victims’ lives are frequently turned upside down, according to a year-long investigation by the Center for Public Integrity. Administrators believe the sanctions administered by the college judiciary system are a thoughtful way to hold abusive students accountable, but the Center’s probe has discovered that “responsible” findings rarely lead to tough punishments like expulsion — even in cases involving alleged repeat offenders.” Multi-part series of articles.
December 2, 2001
Torn From the Land: Black Americans’ Farmland Taken Through Cheating, Intimidation, Even Murder
Todd Lewan and Dolores Barclay, Torn From the Land: Black Americans’ Farmland Taken Through Cheating, Intimidation, even Murder. The Associated Press, 2 December 2001. A three-part series. “In an 18-month investigation, The Associated Press documented a pattern in which black Americans were cheated out of their land or driven from it through intimidation, violence and even murder. In some cases, government officials approved the land takings; in others, they took part in them. The earliest occurred before the Civil War; others are being litigated today.”
June 25, 1892
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. First published in The New York Age, 25 June 1892. From The Anti Lynching Pamphlets of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1920 by Patricia A. Schechter: “In order to launch resistance to lynching, [Ida B. Wells] had to prove that lynching’s primary victims, African American men, were people worthy of sympathy and citizens deserving protection. At the same time, she needed to present herself — an educated, middle-class Southern woman of mixed racial ancestry — as a credible dispenser of truth, a “representative” public figure able to command social and amoral authority. The context of racism and sexism in which she functioned made both tasks difficult. Wells-Barnett described lynching as an expression of conflict over rights, physical integrity, human dignity, and social power and the movement to end it was similarly fraught and contentious.”