At some point, about the mid-1970s, the compelling sin of the South ceased to be racism (any more than in the rest of the country, anyway). It became public relations, image-making, which is perfectly understandable since the image of the late Confederacy had been so bad for so long. About that time, each southern state began to boost itself, to identify itself by tags and labels, slick and polished: “Virginia is for Lovers,” Atlanta “the City Too Busy to Hate” (a slogan which, thanks to the spirit of Peachtree Street, had already been around for a while), and so on.