As a Delta town, Clarksdale typified many movement sites, yet for many reasons it is unique. Clarksdale’s movement was more homespun than in other Delta towns—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had its strongest branch there, founded in the early 1950s by local people. Continue Reading Excerpt: Crossroads at Clarksdale, by Francoise N. Hamlin
The History Channel will be airing a three-part miniseries about the Hatfield and McCoy families starting on Memorial Day. The miniseries stars Kevin Costner, Bill Paxton, Mare Winningham, and lots and lots of guns and violence. Historian Altina L. Waller, author of Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900, was interviewed extensively for the accompanying documentary to the miniseries. Continue Reading The History of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud
Pluralistic attitudes toward Buddhism can be found in many parts of the United States, but it is no accident that this unusually institutionalized example of Buddhist pluralism emerged in the South, where practitioners are relatively isolated from the American Buddhist strongholds in the North and West and must work together in order to maintain a presence on the landscape. Continue Reading Excerpt: Dixie Dharma, by Jeff Wilson
How we understand the legacies of the Civil Rights Movement depends on how we remember the movement in the South. If we remember it as confined to the South, as just about legalized segregation and voting rights, then its legacy looks pretty simple. It succeeded; it removed a terrible stain from American democracy. If we remember it as being broader and wider and deeper and longer than that, then its legacy looks very different. Continue Reading Video: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall on the Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement
Harnett County, North Carolina, celebrates native son and Pulitzer-Prize winning dramatist Paul Green this weekend with the Paul Green Festival. UNC Press is proud to publish many of Green’s plays, stories, and letters, including many books brought back into print recently through our Enduring Editions program. Continue Reading Celebrating Paul Green
Who is the company trying to reach with these commercials except, perhaps, all those white women who read ‘The Help’ and are looking to recapture some of that for themselves? It’s certainly an interesting marketing ploy. Perhaps that is the point. Continue Reading Karen L. Cox: Black Domestic in a Can: A South Carolina Ad Agency “Helps” Glory Foods
Everyone loves their mama and their grandmama, but we’ve always felt like mamas and grandmamas have a special place in the southern kitchen and the southern heart. That legacy of family as a source of strength is especially southern. We heard stories from so many people who have maintained a strong connection with their mothers and grandmothers despite being half a world away. Continue Reading Paul and Angela Knipple: We Are All Southerners Here
What is the difference between life and death? It has nothing to do with the crime or the criminal. It has far more to do with local politics (does the prosecutor think he can get some political advantage going for death rather than life or a term of years?), money (can the accused afford a lawyer and investigators who will do the same kind of work the prosecutor gets done automatically?), the location (most death sentences are handed down and carried out in the south, but not uniformly; in Texas, for example, a preponderance of the death sentences come from just three counties). And, finally, it depends on the composition of the appellate courts the year a particular case comes up: some panels are sticklers for justice; some are sticklers for going by the current rules. Sometimes justice and the rules are incompatible, and in capital cases, lives hang in the balance. Continue Reading Interview: Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian discuss Death Row in America
On August 9, 1964, Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, ordained Addie Davis to the gospel ministry—the first ordination of a woman by a Southern Baptist church. It came well ahead of many mainstream Protestant bodies and only one year after the publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. Continue Reading Excerpt: Into the Pulpit, by Elizabeth H. Flowers
The enhanced e-book features nearly 100 primary-source items, including photographs, documents, letters, newspaper clippings, and 60 audio excerpts from oral-history interviews with 15 individuals—including Clark herself—each embedded in the narrative where it will be most meaningful.. Continue Reading Septima Clark Biography Now Available as Enhanced E-Book
Turning to the war, Davis confirmed reports that some slaves were armed and fighting for the South, but he assured his audience that it “was done solely on compulsion.” Having been a slave foreman, he perceptively compared their plight to that of slaves who “were often made to fill the place of whipping-master.” He maintained that the best way to prevent the South from continually taking military advantage of the enslaved community was to free the slaves so they could “go forth conquering.” Continue Reading Excerpt: The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation, by Glenn David Brasher
[This article is cross-posted from Pop South.] Oh, for goodness sake! The Republican candidates for president went South and the next thing you know Mitt Romney touted “cheesy grits” and practiced saying “ya’ll,” and Rick Santorum adopted a hick accent and told people “I got kin here in Mississippi. I’m not sure. . . (don’t say “what I think about it!”). .… Continue Reading Karen L. Cox: Republican Candidates in the South: A Confederacy of Dunces. So, too, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir & Co.
People’s hospitality was amazing, as was their openness. Many people were very proud of their accomplishments. A few were very humble, but fortunately they had cheerleaders, usually in the form of a relative, who helped them share their stories. They were also very excited about giving us recipes. Their food is their life, and you can’t share one without sharing the other. Continue Reading Interview: Paul & Angela Knipple on immigrant cuisine around the South
For ladies who are feeling delicate after a carnival ball or wedding party, or horse race, or visits from out-of-town cousins, the following julep-type freshener, from Monroeville, Alabama, is the perfect medicine. Continue Reading Eugene Walter on Mardi Gras, with a recipe for the morning after the carnival ball
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 3, 1898, Septima Earthaline Poinsette entered a world that had been shaped as African Americans gained and lost political power after the Civil War. Freedom for most black Carolinians, including her slave-born father, had arrived only three decades earlier, and the Low Country, with its majority black population, had served as the epicenter of black militancy and political activism. Continue Reading Excerpt: Freedom’s Teacher, by Katherine Mellen Charron
Gitterman and Coclanis argue that our leaders must find a way to forge a bipartisan, pro-growth economic agenda and, in order to implement it, embrace creative public-private partnerships of various kinds. Continue Reading New ebook offers blueprint for building a globally competitive South
You must be logged in to post a comment.