Where Is “the South”? Assessing the Meaning of Geography in Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 1100-1134
Author(s):  
Melanie J. Springer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
American South ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
The South ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
The American South ◽  
The Many

The use of geographic classifications to make empirical or theoretical generalizations is common in political science research. Yet, in most cases, these groupings, in and of themselves, lack broader meaning. Offering an in-depth example of the American South, this study demonstrates the need to scrutinize the qualities we are actually interested in when using geographic classifications to explore political trends. The article begins by discussing the many ways that “the South” has been defined in the existing literature. Then, it evaluates the theoretical and empirical consequences of these various definitions using examples focused on discriminatory practices, voter turnout, and civil rights roll call votes. This evidence demonstrates the importance of grounding one’s definition in substantive metrics and historical context over and beyond basic geography. The study concludes with a discussion of its broader implications that apply to several topics of interest and research strategies.

“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done”: Southern Religious History in Retrospect and Prospect

1998 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald G. Mathews
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
The South ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many

One of the most distinguishing marks of the American South is that religion is more important for the people who live there than for their fellow citizens in the restof the country. When this trait began to identify the region is surprisingly unclear, but it has begun to attract attention from scholars of religion and society who have hitherto been esteemed as students primarily of areas outside the South. The study of religion in Dixie cannot but benefit from this change. After centuries of obsession with thickly settled, college-proud, and printexpressive New England—an area not noted for excessive modesty in thinking about its place in the New World—students of American religion are turning to a region whose history has sustained a selfconsciousness that makes its place in American religious history unique. For studying the American South begins with a dilemma born of ambiguity: whether to treat it as a place or an idea. Sometimes, to be sure, the South appears to be both; but sometimes it is “place” presented as an idea; and sometimes it is a place whose historical experience should have, according to reflective writers, taught Americans historical and moral lessons they have failed to learn. Confusion results in part from the South's contested history not only between the region and the rest of the United States but also among various competing groups within its permeable and frequently indistinct borders. Differences between region and nation will, however, continue to dominate conversation even though the myth of southern distinctiveness may mislead students as much as the myth of its evangelical homogeneity. If inquiry about religion in the South should be sensitive to the many faith communities there, the history of the South will still by contrast provide insight into the broader “American” society.

The American South and LGBT Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Barth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
American South ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
The South ◽  
Lgbtq Rights ◽  
The American South

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.

Book Reviews

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 911-912
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
The American South ◽  
William Robertson

Explores the economic gains experienced across racial boundaries in the wake of the civil rights movement of the American South. Discusses civil rights, economics, and the American South; the political economy of the Jim Crow South; southern business and public accommodations—an economic–historical paradox; desegregating southern labor markets; the economics of southern school desegregation; the economic consequences of voting rights; the downside of the civil rights revolution; and civil rights economics—historical context and lessons. Wright is William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History at Stanford University.

scholarly journals “So sensual, so languid, and so private”: James Baldwin’s American South

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-29
Author(s):  
Jeff Fallis
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American South ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
The South ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Essential Question ◽  
The American South ◽  
Legal Fact

James Baldwin has frequently been written about in terms of his relationship to geographical locations such as Harlem, Paris, St. Paul-de-Vence, Istanbul, and “the transatlantic,” but his longstanding connection to the American South, a region that served as a vexed and ambiguous spiritual battleground for him throughout his life and career, has been little discussed, even though Baldwin referred to himself as “in all but no technical legal fact, a Southerner.” This article argues that the South has been seriously underconsidered as a major factor in Baldwin’s psyche and career and that were it not for the challenge to witness the Southern Civil Rights movement made to Baldwin in the late 1950s, he might never have left Paris and become the writer and thinker into which he developed. It closely examines Baldwin’s fictional and nonfictional engagements with the American South during two distinct periods of his career, from his first visit to the region in 1957 through the watershed year of 1963, and from 1963 through the publication of Baldwin’s retrospective memoir No Name in the Street in 1972, and it charts Baldwin’s complex and often contradictory negotiations with the construction of identity in white and black Southerners and the South’s tendency to deny and censor its historical legacy of racial violence. A few years before his death, Baldwin wrote that “[t]he spirit of the South is the spirit of America,” and this essay investigates how the essential question he asked about the region—whether it’s a bellwether for America’s moral redemption or moral decline—remains a dangerous and open one.

scholarly journals Civil Rights, Culture Wars, Voting and the Downfall of the Democratic Party in the South

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
James L. Baumgardner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
The South ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
White Voters

Throughout much of its existence, the Democratic Party was heavily dependent upon the votes of the white South for its electoral success. In the last forty years, that situation has changed drastically. The erstwhile Democratic Solid South has been transformed into a Republican bastion. While many commentators still seek to explain this phenomenon in terms of race, white Southerners publicly are able to maintain political correctness by setting their change of political heart in a quite different context. This paper seeks to place the current political situation in the South in a historical context that explains how the racial issues that actually launched the downfall of the Democratic Party in that region became eclipsed by a national cultural conflict that has allowed an ever increasing number of white voters in the South to explain themselves in the transcending language of morality that comes so easily to Republicans rather than in the debasing context of race.

The American South

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Reagan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
American South ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Racial Tension ◽  
The American South

The American South: A Very Short Introduction explores the American South, a distinctive place with a dramatic history. It is a cultural crossroads, where Western Europe met West Africa in a colonial slave society. The Civil War and civil rights movement transformed the South and remain a part of a vibrant and contested public memory. Moreover, the South's pronounced traditionalism in customs and values have always contended with the forces of modernization and the continuing challenges of racial tension. This VSI looks at Southerners' diverse creative responses to these experiences, in literature, film, music, and cuisine, which have had worldwide influence.

Monumental Constructions: Statues, Identity, and Gabrielle Roy’s “L’arbre”

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Holly Collins
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Live Oak ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Significant Attention

Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans garnered significant attention for his book In the Shadow of Statues (2018), observing that many Confederate monuments were erected to buttress Jim Crow laws and serve as a warning to those who supported the civil rights movement. Likewise, there are a number of monuments in Québec that serve a particular political or religious purpose, seeking to reinforce a pure laine ideology. In this article, I explore the parallels between the literal and figurative construction and deconstruction of monuments that have fortified invented ideas on identity in francophone North America. Further, Gabrielle Roy’s short story “L’arbre,” which describes a “living monument,” tells the story of a racialized past in North America and unveils the falsities that have been preserved through the construction of statues that perpetuate racial myth. “L’arbre” examines the natural, unconstructed monument of the Live Oak: a tree that witnessed and holds the visible scars of the many terrible realities that took place in its shadows. I use Roy’s short story to show how she sought to deconstruct a whitewashed history of the post-Civil War American South and suggest that her broader corpus rejects determinism wholesale.

Southern Agrarians

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny LeRoy
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
The South ◽  
Robert Penn Warren ◽  
The American South ◽  
John Crowe Ransom

The Southern Agrarians were twelve writers from the American South who advocated a return to an agrarian-based economy throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In their 1930 collection of essays I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) and others attacked the system of modern industrial capitalism and its effect on the traditional way of Southern life.

From Coca-Cola to Ebola, Racial Riots to Civil Rights, Epic Ashes to Olympic Torch – the Transformation of Emory, Atlanta, and the South

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Gary Hauk
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
American South ◽  
Law School ◽  
The South ◽  
Emory University ◽  
History Of

Good evening, and welcome to Emory University and Emory Law School. I've been asked to give you an overview of the history of Emory, our home city of Atlanta, and in some ways the entire American South, and I've been asked to do this in less than thirty minutes. I thought I would do that with the help of PowerPoint slides, but unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to project those in this outdoor plaza. So—I will have to call on your imaginations and ask you to conjure up the images that otherwise would be shown on a screen. Let's begin.

Latinas/os in the Southern United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perla M. Guerrero
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
New Destinations ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
The American South ◽  
And Migration

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.

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