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Focusing on the impact of the Savannah River Plant (SRP) on the
communities it created, rejuvenated, or displaced, this book
explores the parallel militarization and modernization of the Cold
War-era South. The SRP, a scientific and industrial complex near
Aiken, South Carolina, grew out of a 1950 partnership between the
Atomic Energy Commission and the DuPont Corporation and was
dedicated to producing materials for the hydrogen bomb. Kari
Frederickson shows how the needs of the expanding national security
state, in combination with the corporate culture of DuPont,
transformed the economy, landscape, social relations, and politics
of this corner of the South. In 1950, the area comprising the SRP
and its surrounding communities was primarily poor, uneducated,
rural, and staunchly Democratic; by the mid-1960s, it boasted the
most PhDs per capita in the state and had become increasingly
middle class, suburban, and Republican.
The SRP's story is notably dramatic; however, Frederickson argues,
it is far from unique. The influx of new money, new workers, and
new business practices stemming from Cold War-era federal
initiatives helped drive the emergence of the Sunbelt. These
factors also shaped local race relations. In the case of the SRP,
DuPont's deeply conservative ethos blunted opportunities for social
change, but it also helped contain the radical white backlash that
was so prominent in places like the Mississippi Delta that received
less Cold War investment.
Focusing on the impact of the Savannah River Plant (SRP) on the
communities it created, rejuvenated, or displaced, this book
explores the parallel militarization and modernization of the Cold
War-era South. The SRP, a scientific and industrial complex near
Aiken, South Carolina, grew out of a 1950 partnership between the
Atomic Energy Commission and the DuPont Corporation and was
dedicated to producing materials for the hydrogen bomb. Kari
Frederickson shows how the needs of the expanding national security
state, in combination with the corporate culture of DuPont,
transformed the economy, landscape, social relations, and politics
of this corner of the South. In 1950, the area comprising the SRP
and its surrounding communities was primarily poor, uneducated,
rural, and staunchly Democratic; by the mid-1960s, it boasted the
most PhDs per capita in the state and had become increasingly
middle class, suburban, and Republican.
The SRP's story is notably dramatic; however, Frederickson argues,
it is far from unique. The influx of new money, new workers, and
new business practices stemming from Cold War-era federal
initiatives helped drive the emergence of the Sunbelt. These
factors also shaped local race relations. In the case of the SRP,
DuPont's deeply conservative ethos blunted opportunities for social
change, but it also helped contain the radical white backlash that
was so prominent in places like the Mississippi Delta that received
less Cold War investment.
This is a firsthand account of a bomb factory's impact on small
town life in South Carolina. First published in 1971, grade school
teacher Louise Cassels' poignant memoir recounts the displacement
of the residents of Ellenton, South Carolina, in the early 1950s to
make way for the massive Savannah River Plant, a critical cold-war
nuclear weapons facility. In late 1950, amid escalating cold-war
tensions, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission announced plans to
construct facilities to produce plutonium and tritium for use in
hydrogen bombs. One such facility, the SRP, was built at a cost of
$1.3 billion at a site that encompassed more than 315 square miles
in South Carolina's Barnwell, Allendale, and Aiken counties. Some
fifteen hundred families residing in small communities within the
new plant's borders were forced to leave their homes. The largest
of the affected towns was Ellenton, with a population of 760
residents. Detailing the period of evacuation and resettlement,
""The Unexpected Exodus"" recalls the dramatic personal
consequences of the cold war on the South through the narrative of
one uprooted family. Cassels touches on such enduring historical
themes as southerners' sense of place and antipathy toward the
federal government as she struggles to maintain equilibrium through
life-changing circumstances. Throughout the text her extreme pride
and patriotism are set against profound feelings of bitterness and
loss. Frederickson's new introduction to this edition places
Cassels' compelling tale against the historical backdrop of the
cold war's impact on the South, a history often lost in the shadow
of more widely read civil-rights narratives from the same era.
The movement that forged the way for the rise of the Republican
Party in the South In 1948, a group of conservative white
southerners formed the States' Rights Democratic Party, soon
nicknamed the ""Dixiecrats,"" and chose Strom Thurmond as their
presidential candidate. Thrown on the defensive by federal civil
rights initiatives and unprecedented grassroots political activity
by African Americans, the Dixiecrats aimed to reclaim
conservatives' former preeminent position within the national
Democratic Party and upset President Harry Truman's bid for
reelection. The Dixiecrats lost the battle in 1948, but, as Kari
Frederickson shows, the political repercussions of their revolt
were significant. Frederickson situates the Dixiecrat movement
within the tumultuous social and economic milieu of the 1930s and
1940s South, tracing the struggles between conservative and liberal
Democrats over the future direction of the region. Enriching her
sweeping political narrative with detailed coverage of local
activity in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina -
the flashpoints of the Dixiecrat campaign - she shows that, even
without upsetting Truman in 1948, the Dixiecrats forever altered
politics in the South. By severing the traditional southern
allegiance to the national Democratic Party in presidential
elections, the Dixiecrats helped forge the way for the rise of the
Republican Party in the region.
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