The American South is a distinctive place with a dramatic history, and has significance beyond its regional context in the twenty first century. The American South: A Very Short Introduction explores the history of the South as a cultural crossroads, a meeting place between western Europe and West Africa. The South's beginnings illuminate the expansion of Europe into the New World, creating a colonial slave society that distinguished it from other parts of the United States but fostered commonalities with other colonial societies. The Civil War and civil rights movement transformed the South in differing ways and remain a part of a vibrant and contested public memory. More recently, the South's pronounced traditionalism in customs and values was in tension with the forces of modernization that slowly forced change in the twentieth century. Southerners' creative responses to these experiences have made the American South well known around the world in literature, film, music, and cuisine. Charles Reagan Wilson argues for the significance of creativity in the South, emerging from the diversity of peoples, cultures, and experiences that the regional context fostered. The South has now become the new center of immigration, adding to the complexity of the region's cultural, social, economic, and political life. In this book, the burdens and tragedies of southern history are placed beside the creative achievements that have come out of the region, producing a portrait of a complex American place.

As a way to comment on a person's style or taste, the word "tacky" has distinctly southern origins, with its roots tracing back to the so-called "tackies" who tacked horses on South Carolina farms prior to the Civil War. The Tacky South presents eighteen fun, insightful essays that examine connections between tackiness and the American South, ranging from nineteenth-century local color fiction and the television series Murder, She Wrote to red velvet cake and the ubiquitous influence of Dolly Parton. Charting the gender, race, and class constructions at work in regional aesthetics, The Tacky South explores what shifting notions of tackiness reveal about US culture as a whole and the role that region plays in addressing national and global issues of culture and identity.

"Flashes of a Southern Spirit" explores meanings of the spirit in the American South, including religious ecstasy and celebrations of regional character and distinctiveness.

Charles Reagan Wilson sees ideas of the spirit as central to understanding southern identity. The South nurtured a patriotic spirit expressed in the high emotions of Confederates going off to war, but the region also was the setting for a spiritual outpouring of prayer and song during the civil rights movement. Arguing for a spiritual grounding to southern identity, Wilson shows how identifications of the spirit are crucial to understanding what makes southerners invest so much meaning in their regional identity.

From the late nineteenth-century invention of southern tradition to early twenty-first-century folk artistic creativity, Wilson examines a wide range of cultural expression, including music, literature, folk art, media representations, and religious imagery. He finds new meanings in the works of such creative giants as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Elvis Presley, while at the same time closely examining little-studied figures such as the artist/revivalist McKendree Long. Wilson proposes that southern spirituality is a neglected category of analysis in the recent flourishing of interdisciplinary studies on the South--one that opens up the cultural interaction of blacks and whites in the region.

"Flashes of a Southern Spirit" explores meanings of the spirit in the American South, including religious ecstasy and celebrations of regional character and distinctiveness.

Charles Reagan Wilson sees ideas of the spirit as central to understanding southern identity. The South nurtured a patriotic spirit expressed in the high emotions of Confederates going off to war, but the region also was the setting for a spiritual outpouring of prayer and song during the civil rights movement. Arguing for a spiritual grounding to southern identity, Wilson shows how identifications of the spirit are crucial to understanding what makes southerners invest so much meaning in their regional identity.

From the late nineteenth-century invention of southern tradition to early twenty-first-century folk artistic creativity, Wilson examines a wide range of cultural expression, including music, literature, folk art, media representations, and religious imagery. He finds new meanings in the works of such creative giants as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Elvis Presley, while at the same time closely examining little-studied figures such as the artist/revivalist McKendree Long. Wilson proposes that southern spirituality is a neglected category of analysis in the recent flourishing of interdisciplinary studies on the South--one that opens up the cultural interaction of blacks and whites in the region.

Witness to Injustice by David Frost, Jr. edited by Louise Westling with an introduction by Charles Reagan Wilson There were two events in particular that had a lasting effect on the life of David Frost, Jr. Watching my parents make moonshine in our back yard in a washpot, he says, and listening to my parents tell the story of how the Peterson boy was lynched here in Eufaula. My parents would tell it like it had just happened. In this compelling account of his life as an African American in Eufaula, Alabama, Frost illuminates the strange world of the rural South. He was a living witness to both the dramatic racial violence and the heroic struggles of the civil rights movement. This world included lynchings as well as the quieter activities of everyday life. His story, told honestly and earnestly, pictures an alternately violent and placid community where whites not only brutalized blacks but also came to their aid. Frost tells of the intricate web of collusion, cooperation, treachery, competition, and sometimes gleeful gamesmanship that wove together the lives of black and white people in this typical southern community. His story recounts his unique perspective on this complex social culture in which strange twists governed daily life, in which a black moonshiner evading the law might take the white sheriff hunting on his property, a culture in which a white doctor, the leader of a lynch mob, spent the rest of his life trying to atone by serving the medical needs of the black community. Although there are multitudinous analyses, narratives, and reports detailing the baffling enigmas of southern history, in this exceptional memoir a fresh, previously unheard voice reveals cultural complexities that most historians have neglected. David Frost, Jr. (deceased) lived in Eufaula, Alabama. Louise Westling is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Oregon. Charles Reagan Wilson is a professor of history and southern studies at the University of Mississippi.

The first comprehensive study of the close ties between the American South and the Caribbean With essays and commentaries by Roger D. Abrahams, Kenneth Bilby, David Eltis, Stanley L. Engerman, Aline Helg, Milton Jamail, Charles Joyner, Daniel C. Littlefield, Bonham C. Richardson, and Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr. Download Plain Text version With the trade of sugar, rum, and African slaves in the islands that form a perimeter around the Gulf of Mexico, the broad expanse of water known as the Caribbean ringed what came to be known as the South. Today concise political boundaries separate the coasts of the American South from the multicultural worlds that dominate the islands. Yet all anecdotal evidence suggests far greater ties. One listens to the reggae in the streets of New Orleans or to the rumba in Atlanta. One notes the moans of the blues in the cafes of Veracruz and watches Major League games in which young Dominican athletes hurling lightning-fast balls become national heroes on their island homeland beset by political and economic woes. Do these human links suggest a greater regionalism than was previously acknowledged? This exciting study of two discrete yet kindred areas gives an affirmative answer. It comes to terms with what many have considered distinct yet fluctuating boundaries that separate and bond southern peoples. These papers from the Chancellor's Symposium at the University of Mississippi in 1998 focus on and examine the strong connections. Geographer Bonham C. Richardson analyzes the territory as a cultural region ""with Little Rock at the northwest corner and French Guiana at the southeast that also includes the eastern rim of Central America as well as the Bahamas."" Other contributors explore the creative cultures that emerged when a brutal European economy enslaved Africans for labor. The essays also examine the economic connections that have created such dissimilar and lasting legacies as the plantation system and the love of baseball. The South and the Caribbean flow into each other culturally, economically, and socially. These papers and their commentaries suggest that future study of these regions must deal with them together in order to understand each. The merging of the two through music, dance, language, sports, and political aspiration -- all discussed in this book -- serves to give birth to a New South and a New Caribbean. At the University of Mississippi, Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez is an associate professor of history and Charles Reagan Wilson is the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.

Providing a chronological and interpretive spine to the twenty-four volumes of ""The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture"", this volume broadly surveys history in the American South from the Paleoindian period (approximately 8000 B.C.E.) to the present. In 118 essays, contributors cover the turbulent past of the region that has witnessed frequent racial conflict, a bloody Civil War fought and lost on its soil, massive in and out migration, major economic transformations, and a civil rights movement that brought fundamental change to the social order. Charles Reagan Wilson's overview essay examines the evolution of southern history and the way our understanding of southern culture has unfolded over time and in response to a variety of events and social forces - not just as the opposite of the North but also in the larger context of the Atlantic World. Longer thematic essays cover major eras and events, such as early settlement, slave culture, Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the rise of the New South. Brief topical entries cover individuals - including figures from the Civil War, the civil rights movement, and twentieth-century politics - and organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Daughters of the Confederacy, and Citizens' Councils, among others. Together, these essays offer a sweeping reference to the rich history of the region.

This volume of ""The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture"" addresses the cultural, social, and intellectual terrain of myth, manners, and historical memory in the American South. Evaluating how a distinct southern identity has been created, recreated, and performed through memories that blur the line between fact and fiction, this volume paints a broad, multihued picture of the region seen through the lenses of belief and cultural practice. The 95 entries here represent a substantial revision and expansion of the material on historical memory and manners in the original edition. They address such matters as myths and memories surrounding the Old South and the Civil War; stereotypes and traditions related to the body, sexuality, gender, and family (such as debutante balls and beauty pageants); institutions and places associated with historical memory (such as cemeteries, monuments, and museums); and specific subjects and objects of myths, including the Confederate flag and Graceland. Together, they offer a compelling portrait of the ""southern way of life"" as it has been imagined, lived, and contested.

Showing the undeniable truth that religion has been a powerful force in creating and maintaining southern regional distinctiveness, this volume of essays by leading scholars explores key aspects of southern religious development, concentrating on the dominant evangelical tradition.

It focuses on crucial time periods--the antebellum years, the late nineteenth century, and the contemporary era--and examines topics that are central to understanding southern religion.

The papers in this volume were presented in 1984 at the annual Porter L. Fortune Chancellor's Symposium in Southern History at the University of Mississippi.

In this study John B. Boles traces the emergence of the South's evangelical tradition, detailing the transformation of evangelical sects from dissenting outcasts in society to their dominance in the South by the time of the Civil War. C. Eric Lincoln's essay offers a thorough summary of early black religious history, including missionary efforts among the slaves, the extent of a black-white religious culture, the importance of separate black denominations, the "invisible church" of the slave quarters, and the nature if black worship./ David Edwin Harrell, Jr., examines religious diversity in the South, bringing together the experiences of Roman Catholics, Jews, and Protestant sectarians living under the region's evangelical hegemony. Through a case study of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, J. Wayne Flynt marshals evidence that an overlooked social gospel tradition has existed in the South.

In an essay on "Religion and Politics in the South," Samuel S. Hill puts the recent religious-political interaction into historical and typological perspective, arguing for the existence of a unique southern outlook on this topic.

The final paper, by Edwin S. Gaustad, outlines the regional character of American religion, with special attention given to the geographical distribution of religious groups within the South.

As a way to comment on a person's style or taste, the word "tacky" has distinctly southern origins, with its roots tracing back to the so-called "tackies" who tacked horses on South Carolina farms prior to the Civil War. The Tacky South presents eighteen fun, insightful essays that examine connections between tackiness and the American South, ranging from nineteenth-century local color fiction and the television series Murder, She Wrote to red velvet cake and the ubiquitous influence of Dolly Parton. Charting the gender, race, and class constructions at work in regional aesthetics, The Tacky South explores what shifting notions of tackiness reveal about US culture as a whole and the role that region plays in addressing national and global issues of culture and identity.

The perfect book for every Mississippian who cares about the state, this is a mammoth collaboration in which thirty subject editors suggested topics, over seven hundred scholars wrote entries, and countless individuals made suggestions. The volume will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about Mississippi and the people who call it home. The book will be especially helpful to students, teachers, and scholars researching, writing about, or otherwise discovering the state, past and present.The volume contains entries on every county, every governor, and numerous musicians, writers, artists, and activists. Each entry provides an authoritative but accessible introduction to the topic discussed. The Mississippi Encyclopedia also features long essays on agriculture, archaeology, the civil rights movement, the Civil War, drama, education, the environment, ethnicity, fiction, folklife, foodways, geography, industry and industrial workers, law, medicine, music, myths and representations, Native Americans, nonfiction, poetry, politics and government, the press, religion, social and economic history, sports, and visual art. It includes solid, clear information in a single volume, offering with clarity and scholarship a breadth of topics unavailable anywhere else. This book also includes many surprises readers can only find by browsing.

Folk art is one of the American South's most significant areas of creative achievement, and this comprehensive yet accessible reference details that achievement from the sixteenth century through the present. This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture explores the many forms of aesthetic expression that have characterised southern folk art, including the work of self-taught artists, as well as the South's complex relationship to national patterns of folk art collecting. Fifty-two thematic essays examine subjects ranging from colonial portraiture, Moravian material culture, and southern folk pottery to the South's rich quilt-making traditions, memory painting, and African American vernacular art, and 211 topical essays include profiles of major folk and self-taught artists in the region.

There is no denying that race is a critical issue in understanding the South. However, this concluding volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture challenges previous understandings, revealing the region's rich, ever-expanding diversity and providing new explorations of race relations. In 36 thematic and 29 topical essays, contributors examine such subjects as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Japanese American incarceration in the South, relations between African Americans and Native Americans, Chinese men adopting Mexican identities, Latino religious practices, and Vietnamese life in the region. Together the essays paint a nuanced portrait of how concepts of race in the South have influenced its history, art, politics, and culture beyond the familiar binary of black and white.

Science and medicine have been critical to southern history and the formation of southern culture. For three centuries, scientists in the South have documented the lush natural world around them and set a lasting tradition of inquiry. The medical history of the region, however, has been at times tragic. Disease, death, and generations of poor health have been the legacy of slavery, the plantation economy, rural life, and poorly planned cities. The essays in this volume explore this legacy as well as recent developments in technology, research, and medicine in the South. Subjects include natural history, slave health, medicine in the Civil War, public health, eugenics, HIV/AIDS, environmental health, and the rise of research institutions and hospitals, to name but a few. With 38 thematic essays, 44 topical entries, and a comprehensive overview essay, this volume offers an authoritative reference to science and medicine in the American South.

This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture offers a timely, authoritative, and interdisciplinary exploration of issues related to social class in the South from the colonial era to the present. With introductory essays by J. Wayne Flynt and by editors Larry J. Griffin and Peggy G. Hargis, the volume is a comprehensive, stand-alone reference to this complex subject, which underpins the history of the region and shapes its future. In 58 thematic essays and 103 topical entries, the contributors explore the effects of class on all aspects of life in the South-its role in Indian removal, the Civil War, the New Deal, and the civil rights movement, for example, and how it manifested in religion, sports, country and gospel music, and matters of gender. Artisans and the working class, indentured workers and steelworkers, the Freedman's Bureau and the Knights of Labour are all examined. This volume provides a full investigation of social class in the region and situates class concerns at the centre of our understanding of Southern culture.

Much of the violence that has been associated with the United States has had particular salience for the South, from its high homicide rates, or its bloody history of racial conflict, to southerners' popular attachment to guns and traditional support for capital punishment. With over 95 entries, this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture explores the most significant forms and many of the most harrowing incidences of violence that have plagued southern society over the past 300 years. Following a detailed overview by editor Amy Wood, the volume explores a wide range of topics, such as violence against and among American Indians, labor violence, arson, violence and memory, suicide, and anti-abortion violence. Taken together, these entries broaden our understanding of what has driven southerners of various classes and various ethnicities to commit acts of violence, while addressing the ways in which southerners have conceptualized that violence, responded to it, or resisted it. This volume enriches our understanding of the culture of violence and its impact on ideas about law and crime, about historical tradition and social change, and about race and gender--not only in the South but in the nation as a whole. |With over 95 entries, this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture explores the most significant forms and many of the most harrowing incidences of violence that have plagued southern society over the past 300 years.

Offering a broad, up-to-date reference to the long history and cultural legacy of education in the American South, this timely volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture surveys educational developments, practices, institutions, and politics from the colonial era to the present. With over 130 articles, this book covers key topics in education, including academic freedom; the effects of urbanization on segregation, desegregation, and resegregation; African American and women's education; and illiteracy. These entries, as well as articles on prominent educators, such as Booker T. Washington and C. Vann Woodward, and major southern universities, colleges, and trade schools, provide an essential context for understanding the debates and battles that remain deeply imbedded in southern education. Framed by Clarence Mohr's historically rich introductory overview, the essays in this volume comprise a greatly expanded and thoroughly updated survey of the shifting southern education landscape and its development over the span of four centuries. |Offering a broad, up-to-date reference to the long history and cultural legacy of education in the American South, this timely volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture , with over 130 articles, surveys educational developments, practices, institutions, and politics from the colonial era to the present.

This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture examines how mass media have shaped popular perceptions of the South--and how the South has shaped the history of mass media. An introductory overview by Allison Graham and Sharon Monteith is followed by 40 thematic essays and 132 topical articles that examine major trends and seminal moments in film, television, radio, press, and Internet history. Among topics explored are the southern media boom, beginning with the Christian Broadcast Network and CNN; popular movies, television shows, and periodicals that have shaped ideas about the region, including Gone with the Wind , The Beverly Hillbillies , Roots , and Southern Living ; and southern media celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Truman Capote, and Stephen Colbert. The volume details the media's involvement in southern history, from depictions of race in the movies to news coverage of the civil rights movement and Hurricane Katrina. Taken together, these entries reveal and comment on the ways in which mass media have influenced, maintained, and changed the idea of a culturally unique South. |Volume 18 of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture examines how mass media have shaped popular perceptions of the South--and how the South has shaped the history of mass media. An introductory overview by Allison Graham and Sharon Monteith is followed by 40 thematic essays and 132 topical articles that examine major trends and seminal moments in film, television, radio, press, and Internet history.

What southerners do, where they go, and what they expect to accomplish in their spare time, their ""leisure,"" reveals much about their cultural values, class and racial similarities and differences, and historical perspectives. This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture offers an authoritative and readable reference to the culture of sports and recreation in the American South, surveying the various activities in which southerners engage in their nonwork hours, as well as attitudes surrounding those activities. Seventy-four thematic essays explore activities from the familiar (porch sitting and fairs) to the essential (football and stock car racing) to the unusual (pool checkers and a sport called ""fireballing""). In seventy-seven topical entries, contributors profile major sites associated with recreational activities (such as Dollywood, drive-ins, and the Appalachian Trail) and prominent sports figures (including Althea Gibson, Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, and Hank Aaron). Taken together, the entries provide an engaging look at the ways southerners relax, pass time, celebrate, let loose, and have fun. |What southerners do, where they go, and what they expect to accomplish in their spare time, their ""leisure,"" reveals much about their cultural values, class and racial similarities and differences, and historical perspectives. This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture offers an authoritative and readable reference to the culture of sports and recreation in the American South, surveying the various activities in which southerners engage in their nonwork hours, as well as attitudes surrounding those activities.

This book features the dynamic and divergent heart of southern culture. Southern folklife is the heart of southern culture. Looking at traditional practices still carried on today as well as at aspects of folklife that are dynamic and emergent, contributors to this volume of ""The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture"" examine a broad range of folk traditions. Moving beyond the traditional view of folklore that situates it in historical practice and narrowly defined genres, entries in this volume demonstrate how folklife remains a vital part of communities' self-definitions. Fifty thematic entries address subjects such as car culture, funerals, hip-hop, and powwows. In 56 topical entries, contributors focus on more specific elements of folklife, such as roadside memorials, collegiate stepping, quinceanera celebrations, New Orleans marching bands, and hunting dogs. Together, the entries demonstrate that southern folklife is dynamically alive and everywhere around us, giving meaning to the everyday unfolding of community life.

This volume of "The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture" offers a current and authoritative reference to urbanization in the American South from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, surveying important southern cities individually and examining the various issues that shape patterns of urbanization from a broad regional perspective.
Looking beyond the post-World War II era and the emergence of the Sunbelt economy to examine recent and contemporary developments, the 48 thematic essays consider the ongoing remarkable growth of southern urban centers, new immigration patterns (such as the influx of Latinos and the return-migration of many African Americans), booming regional entrepreneurial activities with global reach (such as the rise of the southern banking industry and companies such as CNN in Atlanta and FedEx in Memphis), and mounting challenges that result from these patterns (including population pressure and urban sprawl, aging and deteriorating infrastructure, gentrification, and state and local budget shortfalls). The 31 topical entries focus on individual cities and urban cultural elements, including Mardi Gras, Dollywood, and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

This book addresses manhood and womanhood in the South. This volume of ""The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture"" reflects the dramatic increase in research on the topic of gender over the past thirty years, revealing that even the most familiar subjects take on new significance when viewed through the lens of gender. The wide range of entries explores how people have experienced, understood, and used concepts of womanhood and manhood in all sorts of obvious and subtle ways.The volume features 113 articles, 65 of which are entirely new for this edition. Thematic articles address subjects such as sexuality, respectability, and paternalism and investigate the role of gender in broader subjects, including the civil rights movement, country music, and sports. Topical entries highlight individuals such as Oprah Winfrey, the Grimke sisters, and Dale Earnhardt, as well as historical events such as the capture of Jefferson Davis in a woman's dress, the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia, and the Memphis sanitation workers' strike, with its slogan, 'I am a Man'. Bringing together scholarship on gender and the body, sexuality, labor, race, and politics, this volume offers new ways to view big questions in southern history and culture.

This is the first comprehensive stand-alone reference to music in the South.Southern music has flourished as a meeting ground for the traditions of West African and European peoples in the region, leading to the evolution of various traditional folk genres, bluegrass, country, jazz, gospel, rock, blues, and southern hip-hop. This much-anticipated volume in ""The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture"" celebrates an essential element of southern life and makes available for the first time a stand-alone reference to the music and music makers of the American South.With nearly double the number of entries devoted to music in the original Encyclopedia, this volume includes 30 thematic essays, covering topics such as ragtime, zydeco, folk music festivals, minstrelsy, rockabilly, white and black gospel traditions, and southern rock. And it features 174 topical and biographical entries, focusing on artists and musical outlets. From Mahalia Jackson to R.E.M., from Doc Watson to OutKast, this volume considers a diverse array of entertaining topics, drawing on the best historical and contemporary scholarship on southern music. It is a book for all southerners and for all serious music lovers, wherever they live.

This book portrays the legal and political character of a changing South. Volume 10 of ""The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture"" combines two of the sections from the original edition, adding extensive updates and 53 entirely new articles. In the law section of this volume, 16 longer essays address broad concepts ranging from law schools to family law, from labor relations to school prayer. The 43 topical entries focus on specific legal cases and individuals, including historical legal professionals, parties from landmark cases, and even the fictional character Atticus Finch, highlighting the roles these individuals have played in shaping the identity of the region.The politics section includes 34 essays on matters such as Reconstruction, social class and politics, and immigration policy. New essays reflect the changing nature of southern politics, away from the one-party system long known as the ""solid South"" to the lively two-party politics now in play in the region. Seventy shorter topical entries cover individual politicians, political thinkers, and activists who have made significant contributions to the shaping of southern politics.

This work documents the evolution of southern literature.Offering a comprehensive view of the South's literary landscape, past and present, this volume of ""The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture"" celebrates the region's ever-flourishing literary culture and recognizes the ongoing evolution of the southern literary canon. As new writers draw upon and reshape previous traditions, southern literature has broadened and deepened its connections not just to the American literary mainstream but also to world literatures - a development thoughtfully explored in the essays here.Greatly expanding the content of the literature section in the original Encyclopedia, this volume includes 31 thematic essays addressing major genres of literature; theoretical categories, such as regionalism, the southern gothic, and agrarianism; and themes in southern writing, such as food, religion, and sexuality. Most striking is the fivefold increase in the number of biographical entries, which introduce southern novelists, playwrights, poets, and critics. Special attention is given to contemporary writers and other individuals who have not been widely covered in previous scholarship.