Interviews & Oral Histories
Over the last few years Southern Cultures quickly became known for our signature interviews with famous Southerners, and Project Muse houses many of these online, including B.B. King, Pete Seeger, Alice Walker, Alex Haley, Eudora Welty, Walker Evans, Robert Penn Warren, Julian Bond, Son Thomas, and John Dollard. The full list of our interviews from the last decade follows, with direct links to each interview in full. Each of our most recent essays and features also is available with a single click as a $0.99 download for Kindle, Nook, or Sony Library Reader.
Bobby Rush: "Blues Singer-Plus"
interviewed by William R. Ferris
"I try to get the people in my hand, for them to love me, and once I get them in my hand, I can then tell them what I've come to tell them. And I come to tell them about the blues. It's just like a preacher."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Voices from the Southern Oral History Program
Mountain Feminist:
Helen Matthews Lewis, Appalachian Studies, and the Long Women's Movement
from an interview by Jessica Wilkerson
compiled and introduced by Jessica Wilkerson and David P. Cline
"They didn't take us to jail. They pulled us out individually, and the policeman said to me, ‘What would your daddy think if he saw you dancing with a nigger?'"
$0.99 download for KINDLE, for NOOK, or for SONY LIBRARY READER
Full Issue for Kindle ($3.96), for Nook ($4.15), or for Sony Reader ($4.70)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
"Those little color snapshots": William Christenberry
interviewed by William R. Ferris
featuring full-color photographs by William Christenberry
Follow the evolution of the vision and career of one of the South's foremost photographers as he tells his story in his own words.
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Library Reader
Full Issue for Kindle ($3.96), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($4.70)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2011: Photography II
Women Working
photography and interviews by Susan Harbage Page
When Susan Harbage Page worked alongside the women in this photo essay in 1989–1990, in addition to friendships she also made a poignant record: "'Rough. It is rough being a female.'"
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Library Reader
Full Issue for Kindle ($3.96), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($4.70)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2011: Photography II
Home of the Double-Headed Eagle
The Visionary Vernacular Architecture of Reverend H. D. Dennis and Margaret Dennis
by Ali Colleen Neff
"In the deep peripheral ravines settled by the descendants of local sharecroppers, The Home of the Double-Headed Eagle shoots up from a long row of kudzu-covered shotgun shacks and cracked pavement to entangle passersby."
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 2010
Jimmy Anderson: Natchez Swamp Blues
by Vincent Joos
"I learned how to sing from the radio. I didn't care what kind of songs. I like music, period. Any kind, you know. Country-western or blues, I would jump on it."
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.69 ), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Hello, America: The Life and Work of Willie French Lowery
by Michael C. Taylor
"The Oak Ridge Boys--you've heard of them--came into town, and they said, 'Willie, we'd like for you play.'"
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.69 ), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Touching the Music: Charles Seeger
by William R. Ferris
"Pete thumbed his way all over that triangle from Maryland to Florida to Texas. Whenever he saw someone carrying a banjo or guitar, he would cotton up to them. And if they knew anything he didn't know, he'd just find out what it was, learn to do it, and then go on to the next."
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.69 ), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
“Fixin’ to Die Blues”: The Last Months of Bukka White
with an afterword from B.B. King on Bukka White’s Legacy
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 ($7.69 ), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
"My Idol Was Langston Hughes": The Poet, the Renaissance, and Their Enduring Influence"
by Margaret Walker Alexander
with an introduction from William R. Ferris
“As a small child in the 1920s, I was very much affected by the Harlem Renaissance. As early as age eleven, I had read poetry by Langston Hughes.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96) or for Nook ($8.35)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
"I train the people to do their own talking": Septima Clark and Women in the Civil Rights Movement
by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall,
Eugene P. Walker,
Katherine Mellen Charron,
David P. Cline
“They don't give the women any of the glory.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96) or for Nook ($8.35)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
Learning from the Long Civil Rights Movement's First Generation: Virginia Foster Durr
by M. Sue Thrasher
, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall,
Bob Hall,
Sarah Thuesen
“So I took each in turn, and they told me why they hated white folks. This took quite a while, because they were extremely articulate about why they hated white folks.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96) or for Nook ($8.35)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
Albert Murray's Magical Youth
by David A. Taylor
“‘In America they get away from race by saying ‘minority.’ But who the hell’s the best minority in the world? The hero! You know what I’m saying? That’s always a minority.’”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96) or for Nook ($8.35)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
“Eat It to Save It”: April McGreger in Conversation with Tradition
by Whitney E. Brown
"There is a deep, pulsing current of heritage and emotion when your hands are in the dirt, and that's a feeling worth recapturing in the age of the iPhone."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2009: Food I
Having His Say: Memories from Lemuel Delany Jr.
by Kimberly D. Hill
"Periodically this jackass that y’all call Senator Jesse Helms was on the television talking about the outhouses that the colored folks had and laughing about the tubs that they had to bathe in."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009
"Tiger Tiger": Miccosukee Rock 'n' Roll
by Patsy West
"During this time we played with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Procol Harum, Cream, and Jefferson Airplane, and we even backed Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 2008: First Peoples
Alex Haley: Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1989: Angels, Legends, and Grace
by William R. Ferris
"I think in a lot of areas an almost mystic thing happened, given the backdrop. When I was a boy there was pretty strict segregation, and it was so much the historic custom that really relatively few people even questioned it. Then came the 1960s and their challenges to the system."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 2008: Civil Rights
“Everything Changed, but Ain’t Nothing Changed”: Recovering a Generation of Southern Activists for Economic Justice
by Sarah C. Thuesen
"'I took her to see the movie Norma Rae so that she could try to get some perspective on what kind of role she was playing. I think she appreciated seeing that and could see how the city would like to get rid of her because she had a whole lot more power than she imagined.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 2008: Civil Rights
Storm Journal: The Story of the Bay Town Inn
by Ellis Anderson
"The doorway to Number Five suddenly opened directly onto an ocean writhing in fury. The front rooms no longer existed. The floor of the hallway had been sucked into the surf."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 2, Summer 2008: Katrina
Bill Smith: Taking the Heat—and Dishing It Out—in a Nuevo New South Kitchen
by Lisa Eveleigh
"The Mexican guys said, 'let me do it, let me do it!' And they were peerless."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
Pete Seeger, San Francisco, 1989
by William R. Ferris and Michael K. Honey
"I first started learning about the world, and there was a place called the South. It was a distant, romantic place, like the Far West or the islands of the Caribbean."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
Walker Evans, 1974
by William R. Ferris
"I approach these things as a moralist, really, because honesty and truth are moral values, but beauty is something else. And it's a word that should be used damn carefully."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 2, Summer 2007: Photography I
"Everything leads me back to the feeling of the blues." B.B. King, 1974
by William R. Ferris
"I almost lost my life trying to save my guitar."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
In B.B. King's Words. . .
by B. B. King
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Harold Burson on interviewing Faulkner for the Memphis Commercial Appeal
by William R. Ferris
"He'd go in his back woods and drink himself insensible with some of his sharecropper friends."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2006
Interview with Julian Bond
by Elizabeth Gritter
"We just said, 'Whoa, what was that?' and later saw this bullet hole."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2006
Forty Years after the War on Poverty: Interview with Photographer Billy E. Barnes
by Elizabeth Gritter
"There are times when you come upon a scene and everything is right. It tells a story. It has a center of interest. It has emotion. It has people in it who are beautiful people—and I don't mean Hollywood beautiful."
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 4, Winter 2005
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
John Dollard: Caste and Class Revisited
by William R. Ferris
“That whole church would be a riot of the most beautiful songs. To be in the middle of it was for me an ecstasy, one of the greatest experiences of my life. I found it heavenly and unbelievably delightful, freeing and liberating. An odd thing about it was that the singing would never completely die down.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 2, Summer 2004
Alice Walker: "I know what the earth says."
by William R. Ferris
“I love B. B. because he loves women. They can be mean, they can be bitchy, they can be carrying on, but you can tell he really loves them. He’s full of love. I would like to be the literary B.B. King.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004
"I Played by the Rules, and I Lost": The Fight for Racial Equality in the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service
by P. E. Bazemore; edited by Kieran Taylor
“You were there at the U.S. Supreme Court. Your name is called in that body of people. It was just frightening.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2003
The Great Deluge: A Chronicle of the Aftermath of Hurricane Floyd
as told to Charles D. Thompson Jr.
“We were behind one another praying to get out of that water.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 3, Fall 2001: Environment
"A Position of Respect": A Basketball Coach Who Resisted Segregation
as told to Pamela Grundy by John B. Mclendon Jr.
“One of the best ways to play the game is avoid confrontation. The next is to make the adversary ridiculous.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2001
Surveying the South: A Conversation with John Shelton Reed
by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese
“I don’t have much patience with folks who say the Civil War was not about slavery.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2001: Reed