“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.

Lynching Beyond Dixie

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The American South ◽  
Comprehensive History

In recent decades, scholars have explored much of the history of mob violence in the American South, especially in the years after Reconstruction. However, the lynching violence that occurred in American regions outside the South, where hundreds of persons, including Hispanics, whites, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans died at the hands of lynch mobs, has received less attention. This book fills this gap by illuminating the factors that distinguished lynching in the West, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic. The chapters compare the episodes and patterns of lynching in these regions with those that occurred in the South, placing the violence within a broader context of the development of American criminal justice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It adds to a more comprehensive history of American lynching and will appeal to all readers interested in the history of violence across the varied regions of the United States.

scholarly journals Collecting locally : Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama in Alabama institutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mallory Lapointe Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Walker Evans ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South

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.

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.

scholarly journals Slavery and the new history of capitalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-244
Author(s):  
Trevor Burnard ◽  
Giorgio Riello
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
The American South

AbstractThe new history of capitalism (NHC) places a great deal of emphasis on slavery as a crucial world institution. Slavery, it is alleged, arose out of, and underpinned, capitalist development. This article starts by showing the intellectual and scholarly foundations of some of the broad conclusions of the NHC. It proceeds by arguing that capitalist transformation must rely on a global framework of analysis. The article considers three critiques in relation to the NHC. First, the NHC overemphasizes the importance of coercion to economic growth in the eighteenth century. We argue that what has been called ‘war capitalism’ might be better served by an analysis in which the political economy of European states and empires, rather than coercion, is a key factor in the transformation of capitalism at a global scale. Second, in linking slavery to industrialization, the NHC proposes a misleading chronology. Cotton produced in large quantities in the United States came too late to cause an Industrial Revolution which, we argue, developed gradually from the latter half of the seventeenth century and which was well established by the 1790s, when cotton started to arrive from the American South. During early industrialization, sugar, not cotton, was the main plantation crop in the Americas. Third, the NHC is overly concentrated on production and especially on slave plantation economies. It underplays the ‘power of consumption’, where consumers came to purchase increasing amounts of plantation goods, including sugar, rice, indigo, tobacco, cotton, and coffee. To see slavery’s role in fostering the preconditions of industrialization and the Great Divergence, we must tell a story about slavery’s place in supporting the expansion of consumption, as well as a story about production

The Rise and Fall of Mississippian Ancient Towns and Cities, 1000–1700

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robbie Ethridge
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
World Order ◽  
New World Order ◽  
European Contact ◽  
The People ◽  
Indian City ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
Spanish Explorers ◽  
Political Units

The story of the pre-Columbian Mississippi Period (1000 ce–1600 ce) of the American South and parts of the Midwest is the story of the rise of the ancient Mississippian towns and cities and the world they made, the history of that world, and its collapse with European contact. First, however, readers must become acquainted with the chiefdom concept as it applies to these ancient towns and cities in order to outline some of the basic organizing structures of Mississippian political units. The Mississippi Period began with the rise of the great Indian city of Cahokia and the long reach of its influence over a vast region, resulting in a new social, religious, and political ordering across the land and the formation of numerous polities that archaeologists call “chiefdoms” (the Early Mississippi Period 1000 ce–1300 ce). The fall of Cahokia around 1300 ce cleared the way for the elaboration of these early chiefdoms and the rise of others throughout the Mississippian world (the Middle Mississippi Period 1300–1475 ce). Many of these grand Middle Mississippi chiefdoms, in turn, collapsed around 1450 ce. In the wake of this collapse, people regrouped and built new chiefdoms throughout the American South (the Late Mississippi Period 1475–1600 ce). These are the people that the early Spanish explorers met in the 16th century. Encounters with the Spaniards set in motion a series of colonial disruptions of warfare, disease, and commercial slave raiding that resulted in another collapse of the Mississippian world, only this time never to rise again. However, the survivors of these fallen chiefdoms regrouped and restructured their lives and societies for living in a new world order—this one being a colonial world on the margins of an expanding European empire.

Asian Americans in Dixie

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Racial Formations ◽  
The American South

The migrations of Manilamen, Bengali Muslim peddlers, and Chinese merchants and coolies extend the history of Asian Americans in the South into the early nineteenth and twentieth century. Between 1950 and 2000, the Asian American population in the American South increased more than one hundred times, much higher than the national average and the greatest increase among all regions of the United States. Extending the understanding of race and ethnicity in the South beyond the prism of black–white relations, this book explores the growth, impact, and significance of rapidly growing Asian American populations in the American South, and discusses the formation of past and emerging Asian American communities in the region. As the chapters illustrate, Asian Americans have remade the Southern landscape with a visible, vital presence in many towns, suburbs, and cities. Avoiding the usual focus on the East and West Coasts, the book examines the historical and contemporary significance of Asian American migration, religious identities, and racial formations in the South. several chapters attend to the nuanced ways in which Asian Americans negotiate the dominant black and white racial binary, while others provoke readers to reconsider the supposed cultural isolation of the region, reintroducing the South within a historical web of global networks across the Caribbean, Pacific, and Atlantic.

A People’s History of American Prohibition

2021 ◽  
pp. 450-486
Author(s):  
Mark Lawrence Schrad
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Upton Sinclair ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
Elected Representatives

Chapter 16 examines the predations of the parasitic Gilded Age “liquor trusts”--akin to the big railroad, steel, and financial trusts--including the United States Brewers’ Association and the Liquor Dealers’ Association, which corrupted law enforcement and government representatives. Unlike these trusts, the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) could not buy off politicians, but relied on agitation and publicity—ensuring that constituents were fully informed as to their elected representatives’ voting records on temperance. Progressive prohibitionists made common cause with good-governance “muckrakers” like Pussyfoot Johnson and Upton Sinclair. The chapter turns to the wave of state-level prohibitions, beginning with the Oklahoma’s prohibition statehood in 1907, drawing on the long-standing prohibitionism of Native Americans. From there, the “dry wave” swept the American South, where the liquor traffic was more diffused and less organized, and temperance sentiment was strong among both white and black communities.

scholarly journals The Integration of Schools in Lee County, Florida

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Cutler Valdivia
Keyword(s):  
Historically Black ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black History ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
De Jure Segregation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
The City

Fort Myers, Florida, is one of the fastest growing parts of the United States yet historians have paid little attention to the area. This is especially true of the historiography surrounding Dunbar-Heights, the historically Black sections of the city. Despite having one of the largest Black communities between Tampa and Miami, there is scant information on how de jure segregation operated and ended in Southwest Florida. The research provided here fills this historiographical gap using oral histories that give us a glimpse into Florida’s not so distant past. This methodology enables the Dunbar Community to tell a new Black history of Fort Myers. Collectively the speakers presented in this piece help explain how Jim Crow influenced the integration of schools into the 1970s. This history of Fort Myers reminds Floridians of how connected SWFL was with the rest of the state and how deeply intertwined Florida was with the American South.

The South Seas from the Deck of a Steamship

2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Diana L. Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Pacific Ocean ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
The People ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Time Zones ◽  
The Pacific Ocean ◽  
The Many

The story of the people who sailed the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Hawai‘i, Samoa, and points beyond is well documented, yet historians have neglected the voyages themselves and what the travelers encountered on the five-day to five-week journeys to their destinations. Those who crossed the Pacific recorded their thoughts about the sea creatures they discovered, the birds that followed the ships, and the potential of American expansion to the islands. They gossiped about their shipmates, celebrated the change in time zones, and feared the sharks that swam near the vessels. The voyagers had little else to distract them from the many miles of endless water, so they paid attention to their surroundings: nature, people, and shipboard activities. The adventures on the ships enlivened their travels to the islands of the Pacific and proved to be an opportunity to expand their personal horizons, as well as their hopes for the United States.

Afterword

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice J. Hobson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
World Class ◽  
The American South ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

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....

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