Summer ‘09
Southern Cultures volume 15, number 2
Front Porch, 1
by Harry L. Watson
"I once listened attentively as a native New Yorker explained the South to some newcomers more recent than he. 'What made this place possible was the invention of air conditioning,' he pronounced. 'Before that, nobody could live here.'"
Essays
Constructing the Cause, Bridging the Divide
Lee's Tomb at Washington's College, 5
by Christopher R. Lawton
"When Lee surrendered at Appomattox, there were already 1,800 Union dead from First Manassas buried in his wife's rose garden."
Keeping Sin From Sacred Spaces
Southern Evangelicals and the Socio-Legal Control of Alcohol, 1865-1915, 40
by Michael Lewis
"Alcohol undermines the health, enfeebles the will, makes the mind coarse and the tongue vulgar, brings discord to the family, deprives children of their rights, lowers the standard of morals, corrupts politics, fills prisons and asylums with human wrecks, mocks religion and ruins immortal souls."
Memorial Observances, 61
by Catherine W. Bishir
"For years I had wanted to visit Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, that battlefield where the direction of the nation's history changed, the center of more than a century of memorialization. Yet, no amount of reading prepared me for its effect."
Photo Essay
Lessons of Core Sound Workboats, 86
by Lawrence S. Earley
"Peering across the sound in the twilight, a fisherman quickly knows who is anchored for the night or heading to shore. He reads another boat by the pattern of its lights, the design of its pilot house, the lift of its stern, the shape of its bow."
Features
Mason-Dixon Lines On Being Asked to Pray for a Van and Snapper, 100
poetry by Michael Chitwood
"It's a kind of monster,
cobbled from parts of other creatures"
Beyond Grits and Gravy Chitlin Function, 102
by Jerry Leath Mills
"Although I had been around chitlins from time to time all through my childhood, I always considered the actual eating of them as a spectator sport. In the first place, they stank."
Not Forgotten Privy Thoughts, 111
by Randal L. Hall
"I stood on the back porch and gazed across the fresh spring grass toward the squat little outhouse nestled at the edge of the meadow, behind the old chicken coop. All outdoor toilets are not the same, and ours has some unusually fine qualities."
Books
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links, 116
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."
Anne Mitchell Whisnant
Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History, 119
reviewed by Charles L. Perdue
"My wife and I recall two primary impressions: the spectacular views from the Parkway and Skyline Drive, and the feeling of a long, vast emptiness and loneliness as we passed very few other automobiles and rarely saw as much as a house light as we drove into the night."
About the Contributors, 122
"The rich array of photographs and graphics, and the sincere and effective attempt at readerly appeal, go well beyond what is attempted by most... Southern Cultures is truly impressive." —Council of Editors of Learned Journals
