Famous Southerners (T-Z)

This section covers Famous Southerns T to Z. Famous Southerners from A to G are here, Famous Southerners from H to M are here, and Famous Southerners from N to S are here.

Allen Tate

Exiles and Fugitives: The Letters of Jacques and Raîssa Maritain, Allen Tate, and Carolina Gordon
John M. Dunaway, editor
reviewed by Alphonse Vinh 
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 1994

James "Son Ford" Thomas

The Devil and his Blues: James “Son Ford” Thomas
     with William R. Ferris
      “You can't always go by what them preachers say, because right now some of them drink more whiskey than me.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III

Emmett Till

Haunting America: Emmett Till in Music and Song
     by Philip C. Kolin
     “Dylan linked Till’s innocent blood to a Mississippi downpour—so much blood shed from the brutal beatings; Till’s killers ‘rolled his body down a gulf of bloody red rain.’” 
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III

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

"Pitchfork Ben" Tillman

The Youngest Living Yankee Carpetbagger Tells All: 
Or, How Regional Myopia Created “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman 
     by Stephen Kantrowitz
     
“It won’t shock readers of Southern Cultures to learn that when northerners begin to study the South, they bring along what we’ll just agree to call misconceptions.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 2002: Biography

John Kennedy Toole

René Pol Nevils and Deborah George Hardy
Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole (review)
     reviewed by Bryan Giemza
     “I don’t intend to suggest that sexual matters are always beyond the pale. No, the sin of it is simply this: the claims in the book are very thin indeed.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004 

Kwame Ture

Kwame Ture
Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael 
     reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield 
     
“In August 1967 the director of the FBI urged his agents to ‘prevent the rise of a messiah who would unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement.’" 
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 2004 

George Wallace

Dan Carter's
From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994 
reviewed by Ferrel Guillory
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 1997

Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren: "Mad for Poetry" 
     by William R. Ferris
     “I said, ‘Couldn’t we go a little slower?’ And he said, ‘With a white man sitting in this front seat with me? You won’t catch me going less than ninety miles an hour. Mister, you’ll just have to take it. I’m saving your life.’” 
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 2004 

Doc Watson

Doc Watson on the Cicada Concert 
    poetry by R. T. Smith 
    "I wish they’d get tired of tuning and play."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I

Gertrude Weil

Gertrude Weil and Her Times
    by Anne Firor Scott
    "'Who knows? I may live long enough to become a communist!'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2007 

Eudora Welty

A Valentine for Miss Welty
    by Ann Taylor Peden
    "Thank you, heart lady."
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2005 

Eudora Welty: "... standing under a shower of blessings"
     by William R. Ferris
     “One, two, three. I just waded out...through the muck. And then I got in his sailboat. Of course I was wet, but you can’t ask William Faulkner to wring you out, I guess. It hadn’t occurred to me until this minute that I might have.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2003

Killers Real and Imagined
by Doris Betts
Real-life tragedy is the genesis for lasting art when the murder of Medgar Evers sparks the muse of Eudora Welty.
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1999

Bukka White

"Fixin' To Die Blues": The Last Months of Bukka White
with an afterword from B. B. King on Bukka White's Legacy
     interviewed by David W. Johnson
     "There's a gang that would travel if you get on a freight train and couldn't get off. If I'd stayed on there I'd been getting killed."
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV 

Ella May Wiggins

Mill Mother's Lament: Ella May Wiggins and the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929
     by Patrick Huber
     “Ella May Wiggins, the ‘poet laureate’ of the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929, was silenced by a mill thug’s bullet on September 14, 1929.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III

Hank Williams

King of the Hillbillies: Hank Williams
    by Bland Simpson
    "They stopped at a gas station in Andalusia, Alabama, and found a justice of the peace who had a Bible and the right forms to fill out and on top of that was sober."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I

Robert F. Williams

Robert F. Williams and the Promise of Southern Biography
     by Timothy B. Tyson
     “But nonetheless I have been lurking in the shadows, plotting and sulking like one of William Faulkner’s vindictive barn-burners.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 2002: Biography

Mark Royden Winchell

Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of Modern Criticism
by Mark Royden Winchell
reviewed by Michael Kreyling
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 2, Summer 1997: Writers on Art  

William F. Winter

Reimagining the South
    by William F. Winter 
    "Now it is time to talk about what we are called on to do in this latter day South. Now it is time for us to have an accounting of just where we are."
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 3, Fall 2005

Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe's
A Man in Full
reviewed by John Shelton Reed
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1999  

A Love Letter to Thomas Wolfe
by Pat Conroy
The author of The Great Santini reveals a long admiration for the author of Look Homeward, Angel. 
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 1999
 

Richard Wright

David A. Taylor
Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America
     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."
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)   
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 2010  

 

FAMOUS SOUTHERNERS (A-G)
FAMOUS SOUTHERNERS (H-M)
FAMOUS SOUTHERNERS (N-S)