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An open-air flea market in Houston is frequented by Central American immigrants. Photo by APF Fellow Roberto Suro

Houston Dollars Fuel The Human Traffic from Guatemala

One morning in September, 1978 Juan L. Chanax set out from his village in the Guatemalan highlands of Totonicapan and began a voyage with consequences still unfolding in unimaginable ways. A weaver’s son and a good weaver himself, Juan made one of the

Roberto Suro November 15, 1993
United Nations soldiers escort Cambodian refugees returning to Sisophon, Cambodia, in March 1992. Photo by Peter Charlesworth, JB Pictures

Good Intentions Gone Awry: The U.N. Leaves Cambodia

CAMBODIA–Phnom Penh–Micheline LaJoie, a forty-something, brassy blonde former real estate agent from Quebec, eased her hulking white Land Cruiser through curtains of bamboo into the Khmer Rouge village of Chrey Leung. Two weeks before, the Khmer Rouge had taken four United Nations peacekeepers

Judith Coburn November 15, 1993
A billboard at the southeast corner of the Hanford Site alerts people to its emergency zone. Photo by APF Fellow Blane Harden

Bad Comedy at America’s Biggest Environmental Mess

HANFORD, Washington — The mulberries happened to be ripe. They caught the eye of a hell-raising physicist by the name of Norm Buske. He picked a quart and rushed home to make what turned out to be high-anxiety jam. The berries grew here

Blaine Harden November 12, 1993
Anita Hill Baucus said she called members of the Senate Judiciary committee because whe couldn't tolerate seeing Anita Hill "suffering at the hands of a bunch of thugs, and that was how they were treating her. It was frightening to see them all gang up on her." AP/Wide World Photos

Sexism in Washington: Breaking the Silence

It’s been almost two years since millions of Americans sat riveted in front of their televisions, witnessing the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings before the Senate Judiciary committee. That’s a long time ago by Washington standards, where big stories can become ancient history within

Florence Graves August 20, 1993
A metal detector is used in Mather High School in Chicago to find weapons that students carry. © 1993, John Sundlof, all right reserved.

Jailing Juveniles

A spirit of optimism about children created the nation’s first juvenile court, in Cook County, Illinois, in 1899. Kids who got in trouble were still kids, the prevailing thinking went, and the focus ought to be on reforming instead of punishing them. A

Steve Bogira August 19, 1993
Clarence Thomas and Angela Wright Photo courtesy of AP Wide World Photos

Revisiting the Thomas-Hill Hearings

Like the Kennedy assassination, Watergate and the Vietnam war, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings have become a defining event in history that promises to be be reexamined, replayed and reevaluated for decades to come. Clarence Thomas and Angela Wright Photo courtesy of AP

Florence Graves August 17, 1993
Cambodian Prince Norodom Shianouk, right, waves before entering a Supreme National Council Meeting in Beijing with Yasushi Akashi, left, the head of the U.N. peacekeeping operating in Cambodia. The meeting was held at Sihanouk's Beijing home. AP/Wide World Photos.

Peacekeeping in Cambodia: Breathing Space

CAMBODIA–Thmar Pouk–The Khmer Rouge was a no-show. They were supposed to be there for the weekly meeting of the local “Mixed Military Working Group,” a United Nations-run network to police the Cambodian peace accord. Officers from the three other once warring Cambodian factions

Judith Coburn August 17, 1993
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Fringe Banking

Banks don’t want her business. So when Pacquin Davis needed to cash her welfare check one recent Tuesday evening, she went to the Shopper’s Market around the corner from her apartment in an Atlanta public housing complex. The grocer charged her $3 to

Michael Hudson August 16, 1993
Willie Brown, front row, third from right, and the men of Jones Methodist Church. Photo courtesy of the Rev. Hamilton T. Boswell.

Willie Brown: The Play for Power

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA — Willie Brown arrived to face the cameras and the questions. A new Speaker had been chosen in a closed-door meeting of Democrats in the California State Assembly and it was time to make the announcement: A liberal Democrat from San

Jim Richardson August 10, 1993
A Colville Indian chief stands with government engineers on March 22, 1941 as the switch is turned at the opening of the Grand Coulee Dam. Department of the Interior U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Grand Coulee Project

The Grand Coulee: Savior for Whites, Disaster for Indians

COULEE DAM, WASHINGTON – Halfway across a narrow steel bridge over America’s most powerful river, a sign announces the entrance to the Colville Indian Reservation. The sign is small and easily missed in the vast gorge that cradles the roiling Columbia River. The

Blaine Harden May 19, 1993
Al's Place in Mineola,from a 1936 Postcard marking the Texas Centennial. Willie Lewis Brown, father of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, is third from left standing at attention in a white duck jacket. In an interview 57 years later, he said he remembered holding the tray that day. "I wanted to have something in my hand to show I was a waiter."

Willie Brown: The Early Years

Dallas, Texas-On a drizzly January morning earlier this year, a crowd of politicians and lobbyists from California jammed into the Good Street Baptist Church, a modest brick building in the heart of Dallas’s black neighborhood. The power elite of the nation’s most populous

Jim Richardson May 19, 1993
Some of the Evergreen Boys show off some of their hardware.

Photo Essay: Gangs of East Los Angeles

Joseph Rodriguez, a freelance photographer who has worked for Pacific News Service, National Geographic and Black Star and is now affiliated with AnarchyImages.com, is photographing the gangs of East Los Angeles during his Alicia Patterson fellowship year. He lives in Los Angeles. Porky,

Joseph Rodriguez May 18, 1993
Free classes in Houston prepare immigrants for the US. citizenship test and build loyalty to politicians who sponsor them. Latino politicians in the U. S. have often ignored immigrants, but in Houston, city councilman Ben Reyes set up an aggressive citizenship program after narrowly losing a Congressional race last year. Photo BY APF Fellow Roberto Suro. (Photo By APF Fellow Roberto Suro.

Adding Up The Latino Fractions

Alice Salazar worries about the changes that newcomers are bringing to the Houston neighborhood her family has called home since the turn of the century when her grandparents immigrated from Mexico. “This place is full of fly-by-night people now,” she said speaking English

Roberto Suro May 17, 1993
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The Costly “Banks” That Welcome The Poor

Ask Jack Daugherty how many pawn shops he owns in the United States, and he has to put down the phone for a minute to check. “It’s kinda a moving target,” he apologizes. “I have to ask somebody every week.” The correct answer:

Michael Hudson May 11, 1993
Rent America is one of the several rent-to-own stores in Roanoke, Virginia. Photo by APF Fellow Michael Hudson

“Rent-to-Own”: The Slick Cousin of Paying on Time

Some people call Larry Sutton “The Reverend of Rent To-Own.” Sutton preaches the blessings of the rent-to-own business with the enthusiasm of a true believer. He owns a growing number of Champion Rent-to-own stores in Florida and Georgia: more than 20 so far.

Michael Hudson February 16, 1993
David Duke, rear, salutes a burning cross at a Klan rally in Euless, Texas in 1979, the year he said he left the KKK. Duke, a Republican, won a house seat in Louisiana by 227 votes, ran for governor and threw the state party into disarray over whether to support him or not. Photo by APF Fellow Vince Heptig.

How David Duke and the Born-Agains Wrecked Louisiana’s GOP

Louisiana has a spectacular history of corruption, most of it by Democrats. Disgust with that legacy animated Republican leaders, who took party organization as seriously as their rock ribbed conservatism. They had to. Outnumbered 3-to-1 by Democrats, Republicans held few offices until the

Jason Berry February 16, 1993
Most industries in Hungary have not been modernized since they were built. The Manfred Weiss Steel Company plant at Csepel Island, Hungary is shown in 1947, when it was at full production in a Soviet-Approved program to convert rural Hungary into a modern industrial state. Photo by AP Wide World Photos.

Chaos Unlimited: The Gap Between Theory and Practice in the New Hungary

Most of the workers at the Videoton television factory in Székesfehérvár, Hungary were under no illusions about the reliability of the Ukrainian market, the destination for 5,000 television sets that had rolled past their assembly line. It was nice to have the work,

Marianne Szegedy-Maszak February 15, 1993
Children from Operation Rescue drink apple Juice to rehydrate themselves near the Baton Rouge abortion clinic after several hours of morning prayers, singing and marching. Photo by APF Fellow Alissa Rubin.

Children of Rescue

BATON ROUGE-Brent Cadle, 16, drops onto all fours and looks up at his even younger audience. “First, we never walk; we crawl,” be says. The 40 children and a few parents sitting on the floor around him hug their knees and watch, rapt.

Alissa Rubin February 15, 1993
Eric Johnson at home in Wise, North Carolina

Opportunity’s Dance with One North Carolina Family

It was 1968. Arnetra Johnson, a black woman raising four bright-eyed babies alone in a rural North Carolina trailer park, was holding fast to the dream just as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had laid it out: black boys and white boys sitting

Charlise Lyles November 18, 1992