Southern Cultures

Clay Lewis's
Battlegrounds of Memory
Edward Ball's
Slaves in the Family
reviewed by Fred Hobson
"Memoir, by its nature, is self-indulgent, even narcissistic, but it is also valuable as social and cultural history."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 2000

Thomas W. Hanchett's
Sorting Out the New South City
Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975
reviewed by David Goldfield
"This is a southern story of the emergence of mercantile, industrial, banking, and real estate entrepreneurs and how they shaped a city in an era of black disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, and the waning political power of white workers."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 2000

Joanne Grant's
Ella Baker
Freedom Bound
reviewed by Edward O. Frantz
"Through Baker's eyes the reader finds a critical view of Martin Luther King Jr. and NAACP president Walter White."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 2000

Durwood Dunn's
An Abolitionist in the Appalachian South
Ezekiel Birdseye on Slavery, Capitalism, and Separate Statehood in East Tennessee, 1841-1846
reviewed by Noel Fisher
"Birdseye, a businessman and abolitionist, possessed a coherent social and moral philosophy--and a wide-ranging curiosity."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 2000

Michael A. Gomez's
Exchanging Our Country Marks
The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South
reviewed by Sylvia R. Frey
"Race itself developed at the level of the field worker."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000

David Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson, editors
Democracy Betrayed
The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy
reviewed by James W. Loewen
"‘What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000

Janet L. Coryell, Martha H. Swain, Sandra Gioia Treadway, and Elizabeth Hayes Turner, editors
Beyond Image and Convention
Explorations in Southern Women's History
Christie Anne Farnham, editor
Women of the American South
A Multicultural Reader
reviewed by Georgina Hickey
"Many women did not fit the images we tend to remember about southern womanhood."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000

To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America
by Robert R. Korstad and James L. Leloudis with photographs by Billy E. Barnes
reviewed by Michael K. Honey
"With poverty and unemployment at levels unprecedented since the Great Depression of the 1930s, as wages of those with jobs stagnate, as the federal government spends trillions for war and gives tax and bailout subsidies to the ultra-rich, we should be asking ourselves how it got to be this way and what can we do about it. To Right These Wrongs provides many of the answers."
Full Issue for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader
Southern Cultures, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2012

Amy Louise Wood
Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1940 (review)
reviewed by Seth Kotch
"Power rested not only on the brutality of lynching, but also on its communicability, the way in which mob violence traveled from person to person, across state and regional lines, and from the striving white men of the South to African American activists in the Northeast."
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 2010

David A. Taylor
Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America (review)
reviewed by Robert Hunt Ferguson
"Although they approached their writing very differently, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright found the space through the WPA to write compassionately and realistically about black life in America."
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 2010

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links (review)
reviewed by Daniel C. Littlefield
"When Alex Haley's Roots appeared in 1976 it set off a storm of excitement among African Americans about the possibilities of tracing their ancestry to a particular African homeland."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 2, Summer 2009

Roger D. Abrahams, with Nick Spitzer, John F. Szwed, and Robert Farris Thompson
Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America’s Creole Soul (review)
reviewed by Perry Kasprzak
"New Orleans as a city that ‘came into being with a kind of antic doom embedded into it,’ founded as it was in a hostile New World swamp, is brought into bright focus by Nature’s recent, temporary, reclaiming of the land, and Man’s persistent desire to rebuild the city."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009

Jennifer Ritterhouse
Growing up Jim Crow
How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race (review)
reviewed by Clara Silverstein
"Black and white children recounted playing together, then being confused by the pressure to give up their friendships as they grew older. Blacks remembered how normal childhood disputes could take on frightening repercussions if white adults became involved."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009

Andrew H. Myers
Black, White & Olive Drab
Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, SC, and the Civil Rights Movement (review)
reviewed by Alex Macaulay
"What effect, if any, did armed forces integration have in the area around the South Carolina post during the Civil Rights Movement that followed in the fifties and sixties?" The answer seems to be 'not much.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009

Heather Andrea Williams
Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (review)
reviewed by Robin Bernstein
"The existence of any white children in black classrooms proved that the schools offered an education whose clear value motivated some white families to violate racial taboos—and assume physical risk for that violation—to learn alongside black children, and often from black teachers."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009

Andrew Silver
Minstrelsy and Murder: The Crisis of Southern Humor (review)
reviewed by Johanna Shields
"This is a book about humor that will not let you smile."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008

Renee Christine Romano and Leigh Raiford, editors
The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (review)
reviewed by Carole Blair
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2007

Nick Kotz
Judgement Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws that Changed America (review)
reviewed by Jack Bass
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2007

James C. Cobb
Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (review)
reviewed by Jane Elizabeth Dailey
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2007

Freedom's Coming
Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civial War through the Civil Rights Era
by Paul Harvey
reviewed by Matt J. Zacharias Harper
"If you think you understand how religion and race work in the South, then obviously no one has explained it to you properly"
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2006

Twenty-First-Century Slavery
Or, How to Extend the Confederacy for Two
Centuries Beyond Its Planned Demise
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, directed by Kevin Wilmott
reviewed by Trudier Harris
"Are blacks to be proud of the film? Or is it just an expansive, self-indulgent joke that gones on too long?"
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2006

Steve Estes
I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (review)
reviewed by Larry Isaac
"Massacres of entire African American communities were motivated, in large part, by rumors that a black man raped a white woman."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco

Andrew Burstein
Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (review)
reviewed by Kristofer Ray
"Jefferson certainly cared for Hemings, argues Burstein, much as an English nobleman cared for an employee mistress—but they did not (and could not) share a long-term, loving partnership."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco

Jeannette Keith
Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight (review)
reviewed by Jonathan F. Phillips
"What inspired draft resistance in the rural South?"
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 4, Winter 2005

Louis M. Kyriakoudes
The Social Origins of the Urban South (review)
reviewed by Tom Hanchett
"Thank you to Louis Kyriakoudes’s Social Origins of the Urban South for showing the social history behind the songs."
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2005

Jim Carrier
A Traveler's Guide to the Civil Rights Movement (review)
reviewed by S. Willoughby Anderson
“The gripping historical narrative will inspire travelers to chart their own course.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 2004

Timothy B. Tyson
Blood Done Sign My Name (review)
reviewed by Fred C. Hobson
“Ten-year-old Timothy Tyson, of course, wasn't aware of all the consequences—or the context—of Henry Marrow's murder at the time, and his family left Oxford shortly afterward.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 2004

Barbara Ransby
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (review)
reviewed by Charles M. Payne
“I used to give a speech which began by claiming that Ella Baker invented the 1960s. That’s not as crazy as it sounds.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2004

J. Mills Thornton
Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (review)
reviewed by Ralph Luker
“To understand the Montgomery bus boycott, Birmingham’s dramatic street confrontations, and the struggle for the enfranchisement of Selma’s African Americans, Thornton insists, we must immerse ourselves in the minute details of local politics before and after these events.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2004

Suzanne Lebsock
A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial (review)
reviewed by S. Willoughby Anderson
“Intricately constructed from rural county court records and newspaper clippings, Murder in Virginia reads like the best of crime novels.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 2, Summer 2004

Trudier Harris
Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South (review)
reviewed by Melton Alonza McLaurin
“Her conclusions, a mixture of experience and hope, recognize the changes that have occurred in her native region, the racial tensions that remain, and the hope for a better tomorrow.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 2, Summer 2004

Henry Clay Anderson
Separate, But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson (review)
reviewed by Todd J. Moye
“Wedding couples beam. Bathing beauties strut their stuff. A homecoming queen waves from the back of a convertible. A couple of motorcycle riders simply show off in one of the most evocative portraits I have ever seen.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004

Christopher Metress, editor
The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (review)
reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield
“After all, once Moses Wright pointed his finger at ‘Big’ Milam in court, the identity of the killers was not in doubt.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2003

Benjamin R. Justesen
George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life (review)
reviewed by John H. Haley
“In July 1900, George Henry White allegedly stated, ‘May God damn North Carolina, the state of my birth.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2003

Clive Webb
Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (review)
reviewed by Eliza R. L. McGraw
“‘There is only one word to describe their madness—Godlessness.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 4, Winter 2002: Ghosts

Gregg D. Kimball
American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond (review)
Wesley Phillips
Montgomery in the Good War: Portrait of a Southern City, 1939-1946 (review)
reviewed by David R. Goldfield
“Wars change lives. How the Civil War and World War II did and did not remain fascinating issues for southern writers.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 4, Winter 2002: Ghosts

Jonathan S. Bass
Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (review)
reviewed by Katherine Mellen Charron
“Most can remember that 1963 began in Alabama with Governor George Wallace’s famous inaugural declaration ‘segregation now…segregation tomorrow…segregation forever.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 2002

David R. Davies
The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement (review)
reviewed by Berkley Hudson
“In the late 1960s, in an act of teen-aged defiance against the waning Closed Society, I took a hammer to remove a ‘colored reception room’ sign outside a white doctor’s office.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 2002

Ralph W. Johnson
David Played a Harp: A Free Man's Battle for Independence (review)
reviewed by Hunter James
“He soon lost count of how many times the windows of his shop had been shot out by vigilantes passing through in the night.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2002

David W. Blight
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (review)
reviewed by Bruce. E. Baker
“‘Yes, though naked, we are your masters.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2002

David Cecelski
The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (review)
reviewed by William Scott
“Slave boatmen carried more than goods and runaway slaves; they carried an insurgent, democratic vision born in the maritime districts of the slave South.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2002

Sarah-Patton Boyle
The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition (review)
reviewed by Melton Alonze McLaurin
“‘We’re all bastards; God loves us anyway.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2002

Louis Armstrong

Love Songs, and: Music From the Zydeco Kingdom, and: Let's Go!, and: Sam's Big Rooster (review)

reviewed by Gavin James Campbell
“This cd is a delightful complement to any romantic evening.”

Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 2000

African American History and Culture (reviews)

African American History and Culture (part I)

African American History and Culture (part II)