“The vision of an inclusive and thriving South is still elusive,” laments MDC in its newest State of the South report, “[as] we have substituted a culture of withdrawal for a culture of investment.” This 2018 report, “Recovering our Courage,” looks back over fifty years of progress and change in this swath of 13 states from Virginia to Texas while noting with dismay the region’s growing inequities and increasing disinvestment in the education and training essential to grow homegrown talent.
MDC was founded in 1968, the same year that Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, to help North Carolina move from an agricultural to an industrial economy and from a segregated to an integrated workforce. Today, this nonprofit think tank gives us three lenses through which to assess the South’s progress and chart its future directions: belonging, thriving, and contributing.