After the Civil War, the South’s economy, society, and government were in shambles. Southern state governments struggled to raise money to repair damaged infrastructure and to support new expenses ...

Gaping wide like gateways to the center of the earth, the coke furnaces along Lake Road in South Cumberland State Park stand as remnants of what was once Tennessee’s most productive coal mining ...

Incarcerated people work in a rock quarry, possibly Keith Quarry near Palmetto, Georgia, around 1948. (Photograph courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution via Georgia State University.) This is ...