Anneshia Hardy | The Hardy Exchange
For years, I have sat in rooms across Alabama and the Deep South. These rooms were filled with organizers, storytellers, elders, and young people who were hungry for something different. I kept hearing the same sentiment expressed in different ways. Our communities are doing transformative work, but our stories are not being told in ways that honor our truth, our complexity, or our power.
As Executive Director of Alabama Values, my work has always centered on narrative, messaging, and the creation of cultural infrastructure that helps communities understand not only what is happening to them, but why it is happening and how we can respond together. Time and time again, I have seen how narrative gaps weaken movements, distort public understanding, and leave our communities vulnerable to misinformation, targeted disinformation, and deeply entrenched political and cultural myths about the South.
The Southern Narrative Project was created in direct response to these realities.
The South deserves its own narrative methodology. This is not optional. It is essential.
Our history, our culture, our patterns of resistance, and the ways our communities interpret information are distinct from national trends. Traditional messaging models often treat the South as an afterthought or a testing ground. They rarely acknowledge the knowledge systems, cultural memory, or power-building traditions that shape Southern life.
Throughout my work in voting rights cases, pro-democracy coalitions, movement spaces, and community-centered campaigns, I saw a recurring truth. We cannot build power in the Deep South without building narrative power.
This is not narrative as branding.
This is not narrative as simple slogans.This is narrative as memory, meaning-making, and movement-building.
This is narrative as a living ecosystem that explains our past, clarifies our present, and helps us imagine a different future.
The Southern Narrative Project reflects this understanding. It draws from my Applied Cultural Meaning and Memory Framework™ (ACMM Framework™) which centers how historically marginalized communities, particularly Black Southern communities, make sense of themselves, their history, and the systems around them. It weaves together culture, research, movement history, digital storytelling, and collective practice into something rooted, rigorous, and distinctly Southern.
What the Southern Narrative Project Will Do
The Southern Narrative Project is a multi-year initiative designed to:
- Produce narrative research grounded in cultural context, community knowledge, and lived experience.
- Develop liberatory messaging frameworks that help organizers, creatives, and communicators build proactive rather than reactive narratives.
- Train a new generation of Southern narrative strategists and storytellers, including pipelines for HBCUs, grassroots partners, and community creatives.
- Collaborate with artists, culture bearers, and media makers to create content that reflects our communities, challenges harmful narratives, and expands what our people believe is possible.
- Support civic, legal, and grassroots organizing with narrative guidance that honors Southern complexity and the nuance required to move our people.
This project is not only about telling stories. It is about shifting who gets to define the South, whose memories are preserved, and whose voices shape what comes next.
Why Launch This Now
We are entering a political moment where the stakes for the South and the nation are higher than ever. The year 2026 will mark a major turning point that requires us to move beyond mobilization and into the building of real ideological power. The attacks we see on education, voting rights, DEI, public institutions, and even public memory are not random. They are part of a larger strategy to restrict what Southerners believe is possible for themselves.
If our communities cannot imagine liberated futures that are rooted in truth, dignity, and collective power, then we cannot build toward those futures.
Launching the Southern Narrative Project at this time ensures that Alabama Values and our partners across the region are not simply responding to crises. Instead, we are shaping the narratives that will frame the future.
What Lies Ahead in 2026
The year 2026 will be a defining year for this initiative. We will be:
Establishing the Southern Narrative Lab
This will be a collaborative space for testing messages, analyzing narrative threats, studying cultural shifts, and piloting new storytelling models.
Training and Certifying Southern Narrative Practitioners
Organizers, designers, digital storytellers, and cultural workers will have access to training and development rooted in ACMM Framework™ and other grounded methodologies.
Launching the Southern Narrative Research Series
This will include quarterly narrative briefs, message insights, cultural analyses, and creative guidance that focus on the political and cultural conditions shaping the region.
Partnering with Southern coalitions, HBCUs, and media makers
These collaborations will produce campaigns, micro-documentaries, narrative toolkits, and cultural content rooted in Southern truth and community wisdom.
Preparing for a 2027 Southern Narrative Summit
This summit will bring together scholars, organizers, artists, culture workers, legal advocates, and storytellers to align on a shared vision for narrative power in the Deep South.
The Southern Narrative Project is more than an initiative. It is a commitment. It is a declaration that the South is worthy of its own frameworks, its own stories, and its own infrastructure for narrative development and narrative power.
As I lead this work, I hold close the truth that has shaped my entire journey. Those closest to the pain have always been the authors of liberation. Our stories are the blueprint. Our memories are the archive. Our imagination is the engine.
Together, we are building a South that not only tells the truth but transforms what our communities believe they deserve.
The year 2026 marks the beginning of a new narrative era in the Deep South. I am honored to guide this next chapter and even more honored to build it with all of you.
About the Author
Anneshia Hardy is a narrative strategist, scholar-activist, and social impact entrepreneur committed to leveraging storytelling and messaging for transformative social change. As Executive Director of grassroots communications and media advocacy organizations, Alabama Values and Alabama Values Progress, she leads efforts to strengthen the pro-democracy movement in Alabama and across the South through strategic messaging and digital strategies.
Co-founder of Blackyard LLC, Anneshia equips changemakers to amplify their impact in marginalized communities. With over a decade of experience, she has conducted narrative and messaging trainings for organizations like the NAACP and the Obama Foundation. Anneshia has also shaped strategies for landmark voting rights cases, including Allen v. Milligan and Louisiana v. Callais Rooted in the belief that culturally relevant narratives can drive equity and inspire action, she bridges academic insight and real-world advocacy to create lasting change.