Spring ‘09
Southern Cultures volume 15, number 1
Front Porch
by Harry L. Watson
"Did you know that W.E. B. DuBois was a favorite author of the United Daughters of the Confederacy? They didn’t either, for they came to admire the outstanding African American intellectual under the cloak of invisibility."
Essays
The Discovery of an Architect: Duke University and Julian F. Abele
by William E. King
"In 1937, the English novelist Aldous Huxley was traveling through North Carolina by auto one hot summer day. He described 'a pleasant but unexciting land' when 'all of a sudden, astonishingly, a whole city of gray Gothic stone emerged from the warm pine forest.'"
Sundown Towns and Counties: Racial Exclusion in the South
by James W. Loewen
"In 1987, Oprah Winfrey broadcast her television show from Forsyth County, Georgia, which had expelled its black population seventy-five years earlier."
Photo Essay
"Time to Appreciate": The Mississippi Delta Region, 1994–2002
by Bruce J. West
"A lush and exotic landscape—a setting encouraging and supporting heroic transformation—nurtures all endeavors."
Features
Mason-Dixon Lines Tobacco Mosaic: “Lexicon” and "The Sharecroppers"
poetry by Davis McCombs
"He crouched in the shade of the barn, thinking and mumbling,
and the wind ripped the words from his mouth . . ."
Southern Voices Having His Say: Memories of Lemuel Delany Jr.
interviewed 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."
Not Forgotten How W. E. B. DuBois Won the United Daughters of the Confederacy Essay Contest
by Bruce E. Baker
"Nearly a century ago W. E. B. DuBois won an essay contest sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy—or at least, DuBois’s writing won the contest."
Books
John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed, with William McKinney
Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue
The Definitive Guide to the People, Recipes, and Lore
reviewed by Fred Sauceman
"The Reeds and McKinney have crafted a book that ranges from the roasted meats of Homer’s Iliad to yellow page ads in the restaurant sections of North Carolina telephone directories. Holy Smoke is a book not only of many flavors but also engaging scenes."
James L. Peacock
Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World
reviewed by Leon Fink
"A Ugandan boy is lovingly adopted by a Peace Corps volunteer. An Indian wedding at the Carolina Inn features a groom entering on a white horse (substituting for an elephant) while a priest chants in Sanskrit."
Heather Andrea Williams
Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom
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."
Andrew H. Myers
Black, White & Olive Drab
Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, SC, and the Civil Rights Movement
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.'"
Jennifer Ritterhouse
Growing up Jim Crow
How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race
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."
Roger D. Abrahams, with Nick Spitzer, John F. Szwed, and Robert Farris Thompson
Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America’s Creole Soul
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."
Anya Jabour
Scarlett’s Sisters: Young Women in the Old South
reviewed by Katy Simpson Smith
"As a regional phenomenon, southern girlhood is as culturally resonant as it is understudied. From the myths surrounding Virginia Dare to the surreal pageantry of modern debutantes, the South has shaped its young women in its own ritualistic image."
Gordon Harvey, Richard Starnes, and Glenn Feldman, editors
History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie
Scholarship, Activism, and Wayne Flynt
reviewed by Charles W. Eagles
"As a scholar and as a Christian, Flynt advocated reform of Alabama’s regressive tax system, helped found Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform, supported better and equal funding for public schools, served on the board of directors of the Alabama Poverty Project, and spoke out against powerful special interests."
About the Contributors
