McNamara explores events in the Oaxaca district of Ixtlan, where Zapotec Indians supported the liberal cause and sought to exercise influence over statewide and national politics in the era following Mexico’s war with the United States in 1847. There were actually two Mexican presidents who had direct ties to Ixtlán district: Benito Juarez, who served as Mexico’s liberal president from 1858 to 1872, was born in the district, and Porfirio Diaz, president from 1876 to 1911, had led a National Guard battalion made up of Zapotec soldiers throughout the years of civil war. In Sons of the Sierra, McNamara examines the political culture of Diaz’s presidency and explores how Diaz, who became increasingly dictatorial over the course of his time in office, managed to stay in power for as long as he did.

–ellen

The Reeds were honored to have Bob Garner (”Mr. North Carolina Barbecue”) and Dennis Rogers (”Oracle of the Holy Grub”) attend and celebrate with them. (Garner and Rogers make appearances in the book, as well.)

Media folks got a chance to meet the authors and pitmasters before the rest of us descended on the place and the ‘cue came out. I snuck back to the kitchen to watch Ed Mitchell at the helm of the indoor pit as the pig for our event was reaching peak deliciousness.

Ed Mitchell calls it: this pig's ready!

We gorged ourselves silly, I’ll tell you what. Pulled pork, chopped pork, pork ribs, pork skin — not to mention some spectacular fried green tomatoes with pimento cheese, cole slaw, sweet tea, and a banana pudding that was out of this world.

Some impressions from attendees:

Jack Betts, associate editor at the Charlotte Observer, blogs about being in the room with the “barbecue aristocracy.”

Triangle foodie Dean McCord, who blogs over at VarmintBites, posts about scouting out a new generation of up-and-coming pitmasters.

New book reviews have appeared from food legend Jean Anderson and from the Greensboro Telegram, who gives a special nod to the hometown pitmasters at Stamey’s.

For more photos from your humble blog editor, click on through to the other side…

Disclaimer: This night really made me appreciate the photography skills of my trusty fellow blogger Tom. Alas, he was called home to tend to a spouse recovering from dental hell (hope you’re feeling better, Bon!), and could not document the evening for us. Turns out I don’t know what I’m doing with a camera in the dark. sigh. But I did manage to salvage a few shots, and what looks sort of funky I will make you believe is really just “artsy.”

John and Dale Reed (they're the ones whose faces you can actually see)

Will McKinney (left) and friends

Chip Stamey (and illuminated particles of barbecue smoke wafting from the pit!)

Wilber Shirley

Samuel Jones (center) and Charles Stamey (right); unidentified man on left bows energetically in the presence of great pork authorities

Charles Stamey (member of the clean plate club)

Tommy Edwards (a little blurry, but if you squint you can tell that no, that is not his guitar in his hands and yes, that is an anthropomorphic pig riding a bicycle in the background)

That’s all for now.

–ellen

Update: Huzzah!! Dale Reed offers some more photos. Thanks Dale!

Ed Mitchell supervises the pulling of the hog

Charles Stamey, Samuel Jones, Wilber Shirley (l-r)

Five NC pitmasters: Ed Mitchell, Wilber Shirley, Chip Stamey, Charles Stamey, and Samuel Jones (l-r)

]]> http://uncpressblog.com/2008/11/18/holy-smoke-launch-night-at-the-pit/feed/ http://uncpressblog.com/2008/11/18/e-patrick-johnson-on-todays-state-of-things/ http://uncpressblog.com/2008/11/18/e-patrick-johnson-on-todays-state-of-things/#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:51:48 +0000 Ellen http://uncpressblog.com/?p=672 On WUNC’s (91.5 FM Chapel Hill) The State of Things today at noon, Frank Stasio and a panel of guests will be discussing the legal and religious meanings of marriage in light of the passage of Prop 8 in California and similar amendments in other states.

Guests will include UNC Press author E. Patrick Johnson, professor in the  Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University and author of Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South; Steven Petrow, former president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association; Kathryn Kolbert, president of People For the American Way Foundation; and Ara Wilson, associate professor of Women’s Studies and Cultural Anthropology and director of the program in the Study of Sexualities at Duke University.

You can stream it live online. The podcast will be archived here by the end of the day.

from McElvaine:

“New America” = Gone OLD Party

Prior to the start of the war in Iraq in 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made a distinction between “Old Europe” that opposed the American war and “New Europe” that supported that war. Other members of the Bush Administration and neo-conservatives picked up on the distinction. Be that as it may, it is now crystal clear that New America is with President-elect Obama and the Democrats, while Old America clings to the Grand Old Party, with the emphasis on the middle name — a middle name that, ironically, had a greater impact on the outcome of the election than did that of the Democratic nominee.

The United States is changing and the principal question about this year’s vote was whether it would be the last of the old elections or the first of the new elections. If it was the former, John McCain might eke out a narrow victory. If the latter, Barack Obama would win.

A depiction of Old America would be as a black-and-white (or, more accurately, white-and-black) photograph. New America can be painted only from a full palette.

Look at the party conventions. One was monochromatic; the other presented the range of human colors. Aside from the presence of far more female delegates, the Republican gathering in Minnesota looked like a convention of either party from before the 1960s — or an all-white country club. The Democratic convention in Colorado looked like America . . . New America. Diverse America.

John McCain won Old America. He carried whites by 12 points, 55% to 43%. But Barack Obama won New America in decisive fashion, carrying 95% of African Americans, 67% of Hispanics, and 62% of Asians. And the Democrat won first-time voters by the astounding margin of 69% to 30%.

Click here to read the rest of McElvaine’s post.

Every four years journalists, political commentators, and those interested in politics tend to use phrases like “historic election.” In fact, a Google search of the terms “Obama historic election” garners over 1,200,000 hits. While the description is often nothing more than hyperbole, this year it appears to be true. We have elected the first African American president in the history of our country. This occurred just 60 years after Senator Strom Thurmond (then a relatively young man) famously declared that “there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.” Given this context, it is certainly no exaggeration to call this election historic. The pundits seem to have gotten that much correct. Journalists and politicians are much more adroit with the written and spoken word than we, so although we acknowledge the importance of the election, that is not what we wanted to blog about. Instead, we wanted to examine hard data to determine whether some of the major storylines around this election were, in fact, true.

Assessing the Big Stories

Big Story #1: Don’t trust the polls this time. There was a lot of talk about whether we could trust the polls. Some bloggers and journalists discussed the possibility that white people might claim they would vote for a black candidate, but when voting in anonymity, would vote for a white candidate. Others suggested that the increase in cell-phone usage might lead the polls to underestimate Obama’s vote. A third storyline about polling suggested that the massive expected turnout would render the “likely voter” screens useless. To determine whether this was the case, we plotted the predicted results from Pollster.com with the actual outcome by state. The resulting picture (below) suggests that we shouldn’t fire the pollsters just yet. In fact, the pollsters got almost every state correct.

Big Story #2: The South is back in play. This was certainly a good year for Democrats across the country and in the South, as Obama won a triad of southern states (VA, FL, and NC) that have not gone for a Democratic candidate in quite some time. Add Kay Hagan taking over Liddy Dole’s Senate seat and it is easy to see why southern Democrats might be in a particularly good mood. Although we agree that this was a banner year for southern Democrats, we also believe it might be a bit too early to use the term realignment.  We believe that any analysis of the 2008 election has to consider the economic conditions, lingering war in Iraq, and President Bush’s unpopularity.

We think a lot about the South and frequently ask the question “Just where is the modern South?” Although it is convenient to think about state boundaries, there are some interesting changes occurring within states. As any frequent visitor to the Research Triangle in North Carolina can attest, this part of the state doesn’t feel much like the rest of the South. The Research Triangle is dominated by highly educated professors and researchers, many of whom hail from all over the country, and even the world. As a result, we are not sure that the Research Triangle qualifies as the South anymore. So, given this, what did the “real North Carolina” do in this election? To find out, we subtracted the votes in Orange, Durham, and Wake Counties from the North Carolina totals. Without these counties, McCain wins the state 52% to 48%. Obviously the closeness of the election means that just a few counties can change the results, but we were struck by how differently the results looked outside of these three counties. Of course parts of Virginia and Florida fall outside of many traditionalists’ definitions of the South as well.

Big Story #3: Turnout was extraordinarily high. For this storyline, we wanted to consult Michael McDonald, a voter turnout expert at George Mason University. For the past few years Professor McDonald has been keeping some of the most accurate data available on turnout. His data suggest that turnout was indeed high, but perhaps not as high as many had hoped. Further, youth turnout was up, but the real story was not as much about the quantity of the vote, but rather the degree to which Obama dominated amongst people below the age of 30. For more about the characteristics of the youth vote among Tar Heel college students, consult our recent op-ed at Charlotteobserver.com.

Chris Cooper and Gibbs Knotts
Western Carolina University

The book popped up in the #15 spot in hardcover nonfiction on SIBA’s (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) Southern Indie Bestseller List for the week ending November 2.

This morning’s News & Observer featured an interview with the Reeds.

Today, John and Dale Reed talked to Frank Stasio on The State of Things. (Podcast will be available here.)

Tonight (11/12), the Reeds will be at the Cary Barnes & Noble at 7 p.m.

Saturday (11/15), they’ll be at McIntyre’s Fine Books, Pittsboro, at 11 a.m., and at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill at 2 p.m.

There are more things in store, so stay tuned!!

–ellen

In The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era, Andrew J. Huebner explores how journalists and artists began to reveal American soldiers not just as one-dimensional figures of bravery and valor, but as multi-dimensional human beings who suffered, feared, and were often harmed in the line of duty. He examines film, literature, television, and other media to show how images of the citizen soldier shifted from sentimentality to realism. The book was a Nota Bene selection of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“From The Best Years of Our Lives to Coming Home, Huebner’s lively and revealing study will challenge many glib assumptions about the differences between the ‘greatest generation’ of World War II and the baby boomers of the 1960s.”–Christian Appy, author of Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam

In The Marines of Montford Point: America’s First Black Marines, Melton A. McLaurin introduces readers to the African American men who integrated the last all-white branch of the U.S. military. Drawing on interviews with 60 veterans who received basic training at Camp Montford Point, the black Marine base adjacent to Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina, between 1942 and 1949, McLaurin relates their reasons for enlisting; their arrival at Montford Point and the training they received there; their lives in a segregated military and in the Jim Crow South; their experiences of combat and service in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam; and their legacy.

The interviews that led to McLaurin’s book also led to a documentary film of the same name, narrated by Louis Gossett Jr. Tonight in Raleigh, African American veterans of World War II will be honored by American Legion Post 157.

With Ask and Tell: Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak Out, Steve Estes collects the stories of gay and lesbian soldiers serving from World War II to the Iraq War. In their own words, these veterans relate their experiences as men and women who simply did their duty and served their country in the face of homophobia, prejudice, and enemy fire.

“Whether one believes the military should lift its ban on open confession of homosexuality or not, it is hard to argue with Estes that ‘at the very least, this volume documents courage that should not be forgotten.’ Estes’s work is a welcome addition to the debate over homosexuals in the military and an appreciable addition to an all-too-elided aspect of military history.”–Military Review

Hadler begins:

On March 31, 2008, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca trumpeted the early closing of its so-called JUPITER trial of a cholesterol-lowering drug (statin), Crestor. The results after only two years yielded “unequivocal evidence” of the drug’s effectiveness, the trial concluded, and the company argued that it could not be withheld from anyone who was well and had normal cholesterol levels but had an elevation in another normal blood constituent, the C-reactive protein (CRP).

I am the skeptical physician who is unwilling to let anyone test my cholesterol until I see unequivocal data that taking a statin yields meaningful benefit for me. Now AstraZeneca wants me to get my CRP measured so that I can swallow Crestor if it’s elevated.

I knew there was a devil in the details. Let me flush it out for you.

Read the rest of Hadler’s article at abcnews.com.

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Today, November 10, is the 110th anniversary of the event. Ten years ago, UNC Press published Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy, edited by David S. Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson. The editors set the scene (p. 4):

On a chilly autumn day one hundred years ago, armed columns of white business leaders and working men seized the majority-black city of Wilmington by force. For almost a year, the Democratic Party–the self-avowed ‘party of white supremacy’–had conducted a statewide campaign of racist appeals and political violence aimed at shattering the coalition of black Republicans and white Populists that had been in office since 1894. Advocating freer elections, popular control of local government, and regulation to contain the excesses of monopoly capitalism, this interracial ‘Fusion’ coalition had captured the governorship, the General Assembly, and countless local offices, threatening the power of both the remnants of the old planter class and the emerging industrial leaders of the New South. For the first time since Radical Reconstruction in 1868-70, black North Carolinians and a sizable number of whites had come together in a common cause. White Democrats found this unbearable. ‘We will not live under these intolerable conditions,’ Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell told a crowd of cheering Democrats. ‘We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of negroes, even if we have to choke the current of the Cape Fear with carcasses.’

An editorial exchange became the tipping point for white supremacists in Wilmington. From Ronnie W. Faulkner’s entry on the Wilmington Race Riot in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina:

The Wilmington Race Riot of 10 Nov. 1898 constituted the most serious incident of racial violence in the history of North Carolina. It has been variously called a revolution, a race war, and more accurately a coup d’etat. The outbreak stemmed from an editorial published on 18 Aug. 1898 by the Wilmington Daily Record, an African American newspaper edited by Alexander Manly. In response to an appeal for the lynching of black rapists made by crusader Rebecca Felton in Georgia on 11 Aug. 1897, Manly wrote that white women ‘are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women.’ Moreover, Manly argued, many accusations of rape were simply cases where a black man was having an affair with a white woman. Because it involved the sensitive issues of interracial sexual relations, the editorial struck a raw nerve with many whites and led to bitter denunciations of Manly in the Democratic press.

Waddell demanded Manly leave Wilmington by the morning of 10 November. Manly did, in fact, leave Wilmington, but notification did not reach Waddell before his deadline. A mob of hundreds of armed white men destroyed the press at the Wilmington Daily Record and set fire to the building. They shot and killed an unknown number African Americans (accounts range from 7 to 300). They ousted the council of aldermen and the mayor. Waddell declared himself the new mayor and appointed a new board of aldermen.

White rule was reinstated in Wilmington for another half-century.

In 2000, the North Carolina General Assembly called for a commission to conduct a formal investigation of the events of 1898 to establish a historical record and examine the economic consequences of the event for African Americans in the state of North Carolina. The commission presented its report in April 2006. They opened their report with an epigraph from Charles Waddell Chesnutt’s The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899):

Some time, we are told, when the cycle of years has rolled around, there is to be another golden age, when men will dwell together in love and harmony, and when peace and righteousness shall prevail for a thousand years. God speed the day, and let not the shining thread of hope become so enmeshed in the web of circumstance that we lose sight of it; but give us here and there, and now and then, some little foretaste of this golden age, that we may the more patiently and hopefully await its coming!

The commission documented a conspiracy among white Democratic elites in Wilmington and New Hanover county to overthrow, by force, a legitimately elected municipal government. The report cited the media as playing a role in the conspiracy, specifically naming Josephus Daniels, publisher of the Raleigh News and Observer (N&O) at the time, as the “precipitator of the riot.” This prompted the N&O and the Charlotte Observer to turn to historian Tim Tyson to help create a special section on the event to be distributed in newspapers statewide, documenting the history of the “riot” and the papers’ involvement in it. In November 2006, “The Ghosts of 1898″ was published.

In 2008, Wilmington dedicated a memorial to the unknown numbers of African Americans who “choked Cape Fear with their carcasses” — just four days after the nation elected the first African American president of the United States. Tim Tyson spoke with the Huffington Post a week before the historic presidential election, helping put the possible Obama victory in historical perspective for North Carolina. He predicted an Obama victory in North Carolina  (which has, after some delay, come to pass) would demonstrate “that we are on the edge of yet another new South, a forward-looking South that will rise again but with school books, not bayonets, with health care, not a Confederacy of Dunces.”

In the spirit of moving forward — together — perhaps this historic election can indeed bring “some little foretaste of this golden age.” May we all work to create another new South.

–ellen

So on clean-up day at the Press, folks tend to dress a little more casual than usual–you never know what great feats of strength or agility you may be inspired to perform. Even the refrigerators get a going-over! We all take a break around noon and enjoy pizza together. I think we tore through a dozen pies in record time today. Two lonesome leftover slices remain on the kitchen table at present (I just took care of the third, ahem).

We had some special visitors at the Press today–unrelated to clean-up day. No, despite their rolled-up sleeves, we did not require John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed to dust any bookshelves or wipe any mysterious crust from the refrigerator door. The Reeds came by to sign copies of Holy Smoke for Press staff–mostly in multiples. The line stayed small but constantly regenerated itself, like a salamander who loses its tail and then grows a new one. Thanks for signing, John and Dale!

Have a good hopey weekend, everybody.

–ellen

We do know, however, that NC has just elected its first female governor, Bev Perdue (D), and Elizabeth Dole (R) has just lost her Senate seat to Kay Hagan (D).

To get the best analysis of how things are shaking out in North Carolina, tune in to the State of Things today at noon (that link allows you to livestream the WUNC broadcast). Rob Christensen will be there to help walk us through it all.

–ellen

Living in a swing state is a new feeling for us North Carolinians. We’ve had dozens of visits from presidential candidates and their surrogates this time around. Our state’s changing demographics have something to do with it, sure, but the candidates also have a lot to do with it. No offense to white males, but people who look like that have been winning presidential campaigns in America for hundreds of years. Presidential politics got a lot more interesting this time around as Republicans, Democrats, Greens, and Independents all presented Pres/VP tickets that would break that tradition.

Is it still a democracy when only a quarter or even a third of eligible voters actually vote? There’s a reason (well, okay, several reasons, but bear with me . . . ) American voter turnout has often been embarrassingly low. The way I see it–having been one of those non-voters at various points in my life–non-voters skip elections because either they don’t want to vote (they don’t like their options or they don’t see any difference among them), or they can’t vote. Not showing up to vote is, in fact, a vote. It’s a vote for more options; it’s a vote for better access.

This time, with all signs pointing toward record turnout, it looks like we might be getting closer to this whole participatory democracy thing we like to talk about so much, in which more people than ever vote by showing up and marking a ballot. It’s not simply a matter of identity politics; it’s about actual democracy.

So, here’s to getting closer to our democratic ideal. If you haven’t done it yet, go out and practice some democracy tomorrow!

cheers,

ellen