scholarly journals ‘Christian Patriots’: The Intersection Between Proto-fascism and Clerical Fascism in the Antebellum South

Author(s):  
Stefan Roel Reyes

Abstract This article examines the convergence between clerical fascism and proto-fascism in the Antebellum South of the United States. The author employs Roger Griffin’s theories of palingenetic ultranationalism and clerical fascism to understand the worldviews of Southern intellectuals. The author argues that a cadre of Southern theologians rejected the liberal heritage of the United States and redefined the relationship between the individual and state. Southern clerical fascists reconceived of an alternative modernity that reflected God’s precepts. Slaves, laborers, and slave masters all had a mandate to guide secular and spiritual progress. Furthermore, these Southern clerics believed the best hope for securing God’s order was to be found in the birth of a new Southern society – the Confederate States of America. This study builds upon the works of other historians who discerned the illiberal and authoritarian qualities of the American South while also contributing to delineation of the protean qualities of clerical fascism.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mallory Lapointe Taylor

Within the United States, the American South can be perceived as its own entity. From the arts to Southern cuisine, the South commands attention with its own history, myths and culture. Within the history of photography, Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama are arguably some of the most culturally significant images taken of the state and its residents. This thesis investigates how photographs of Alabama are collected in the same locality. By examining the collecting practices of four Alabama institutions in regards to photographs in general, and Walker Evans specifically, this case study will expand on the question of how photographs, in a Southern cultural context, work to create a sense of place and attachment to local geography.


Author(s):  
Perla M. Guerrero

Latinas/os were present in the American South long before the founding of the United States of America, yet knowledge about their southern communities in different places and time periods is deeply uneven. In fact, regional themes important throughout the South clarify the dynamics that shaped Latinas/os’ lives, especially race, ethnicity, and the colorline; work and labor; and migration and immigration. Ideas about racial difference, in particular, reflected specifics of place, and intersections of local, regional, and international endeavors and movements of people and resources. Accordingly, Latinas/os’ position and treatment varied across the South. They first worked in agricultural fields picking cotton, oranges, and harvesting tobacco, then in a variety of industries, especially poultry and swine processing and packing. The late 20th century saw the rapid growth of Latinas/os in southern states due to changing migration and immigration patterns that moved from traditional states of reception to new destinations in rural, suburban, and urban locales with limited histories with Latinas/os or with substantial numbers of immigrants in general.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-154
Author(s):  
Chin Yu Chen

There is a famous Chinese proverb which says “a good man never fights with a woman.” From the viewpoint of this Chinese custom, women should always be respected. This maxim certainly was never applied to Black women in the Ante-bellum south of the United States prior to the Civil War. The intent of this paper is to bring to the attention of the reader some of the inhumanity practiced on slave women when they were required to work, without pay, on the plantations in the American South before that country’s Civil War. The women learned quickly to “respect” the “lash” which beat them if they did not do their work properly, or sassed their master. Slavery, at its best, is a terrible institution, and this paper does not address the subject of slavery in other parts of the world. This study is designed to study the plight of Black women, and their struggles, in that time of supposed Southern “gentility.” This study will also attempt to provide an insight into the work and family life of Black women in the era of the Antebellum South.


Fascism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-330
Author(s):  
Stefan Roel Reyes

Abstract This article examines how the Southern proslavery defense produced a distinctly proto-fascist ideology. Rather than comparing the Antebellum South to twentieth century racist regimes, this study compares Southern fascist thought to Germany’s nineteenth century Völkisch movement. The author uses Roger Griffin’s Palingenetic Ultranationalism to explore how the Antebellum South promoted an illiberal vision of modernity. The author argues that proto-fascists rejected liberalism, had a profound sense of social decay, and advanced a vision of a new man, new political structure, and a new temporality. The striking similarities between nineteenth and twentieth century fascist movements mandates that the Antebellum American South should be included in comparative fascist studies. The results of this study contextualize the comparisons made between American racism and fascism along with deepening our understanding of fascism’s protean qualities.


Author(s):  
Maurice J. Hobson

Atlanta, Georgia, witnessed both the greatest successes and greatest failures with regard to blacks in the United States. A Deep South city, Atlanta was marked by the sordid racial history of the American South with its riots and rebellions, yet was transformed into the South’s newest world-class international city by the late twentieth century....


Author(s):  
Jay Barth

The cultural distinctiveness of the South led to a backlash in the region in the years following the rise of a national LGBTQ movement. In the decades that followed, political science research showed that the South remained fundamentally different than elsewhere in the nation in terms of attitudes regarding LGBTQ individuals and policies, both regarding overall views and Southerners’ imperviousness to personal contact with queer individuals in terms of reshaping attitudes. In electoral politics, explicit group-based appeals regarding LGBTQ individuals were often employed. And, policy divergence between the South and non-South was stark. While unambiguous shifts have occurred in the South in a more pro-LGBTQ rights direction, the region remains distinctively conservative when it comes to LGBTQ politics. Particularly striking are Southern attitudes toward transgender individuals and policies. That said, “two Souths” have begun to cement on LGBTQ politics as urbanized and suburbanized areas have diverged. Moreover, within the region’s Republican Party, a factional divide has begun to show itself across the South. The South remains consequential in gauging whether backpedaling on the dramatic progress made on LGBTQ rights is occurring in the United States.


2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-208
Author(s):  
RICHARD H. KING

It is tempting to think that we have heard just about all we want or need to know about race. As the above quotes indicate, modern notions of race have always revolved around the faculty of vision, with supplementary contributions from other senses such as hearing, as Arendt notes in a tacit allusion to one mark of Jewish difference—the way they sounded when concentrated in urban settings. Yet two very recent works—Mark M. Smith's How Race Is Made and Anne C. Rose's Psychology and Selfhood in the Segregated South—have much to teach us about how race has “worked”, particularly in the twentieth-century South but also, by implication, in the United States in general. Both works assume that, historically, race is no mere add-on to the self, a kind of externality that, once detected, can be relatively easily excised. Rather, it stands right at the heart of personal and group identity in a nation where race and ethnicity continue to assume surprising new shapes and forms.


Author(s):  
Charles Reagan Wilson

The ‘Introduction’ provides an overview of the American South. Its early history illuminates the expansion of Europe into the New World, creating a colonial, plantation, slave society that made it different from other parts of the United States. Two broad geographical subdivisions anchor what became known as “the South”: an Uplands and a Lowlands. Ultimately, speaking of the South brings attention to the importance of regionalism in American history. Atlanta Olympics refurbished the South’s claim to a special southern hospitality, epitomizing such themes as race relations, economic development, and cultural expression that figure prominently in the larger story of the American South.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Bryan Rindfleisch

This article explores the lives of the countless “Indian Factors” who straddled Native and European worlds during the eighteenth century. For the most part, these individuals were born of mixed unions between European men and Creek women, and were employed as traders and intermediaries in the deerskin trade and Creek-British politics. However, after the Seven Years’ War, Indian factors triggered a political contest within the Creek Nation, by empowering younger generations of men who challenged micos—the traditional leaders—for authority in their communities. Such tension led to increasing violence with Europeans and contributed to the revolutionary crisis in the South. After 1783, factors again evolved in response to the threat of the United States, this time as voices of Creek sovereignty. All in all, Indian factors embodied the multifaceted definitions and transformative changes that swept the Creek world and the American South during the eighteenth century.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 407-429
Author(s):  
JODY STOKES-CASEY

In 2016, racist, patriarchal rhetoric dominated the political landscape of the United States. As a response, activist artist Richard Lou of Memphis, Tennessee created a video piece as part of his series ReCovering Memphis titled ReContexting Bodies. In the artwork, Lou performs whiteness by re-creating photographs and reciting words of historic Civil War leaders Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest and President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis. With his racialized body, Lou confronts the foundations of white supremacy in the United States American South. ReContexting Bodies examines how two historic identities of southern masculinity shape contemporary biases.


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