“Reminiscences and a gallery of photos documenting an unfinished journey that began thirty years ago.” On 16 September 1997, civil rights activist Bertha Luster called me from Marks, Mississippi. I had first met Ms. Luster and her six children in 1968 on the Mule Train, part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) Poor People’s »
Peering out from every supermarket’s shelves, between the Pop-Tarts and maple syrup, is a smiling riddle. Aunt Jemima brand pancake mix has been a part of American life for more than a century now, an overwhelmingly popular choice of consumers. The woman on the box has undergone numerous makeovers, but she remains the same in »
“The first thing we’ve got to do is use political campaigns again as the way to establish dialogue and a way to paint a view or a vision of where we ought to be.” Political campaigns happen to be the ideal place to talk about what your vision for a place ought to be. If, »
“Southern women still achieve firsts that have long been secured by women in other regions.” Ah, the flower of southern womanhood: gracious, lovely, and charming. Many features of southern culture have changed greatly over time. In one way, though, the South retains its distinctiveness: it remains the region of the country least hospitable to the »
“Our stories should be testaments to the enduring significance of their stories, not monuments to our own changing perceptions of the past.” In planning our conference on social memory and southern history, one question arose again and again: What is social memory? Good question.
“Our sudden interest in memory has something to do with the democratization of history, with our interest in how literally everyone saw themselves.” I would like to admit right off the bat that I didn’t have a thing to do with organizing this extremely well-organized conference, though I did consult on the T-shirts and mugs. »
Dixie, the song tells us, is the place where old times are not forgotten. Reminiscence about the past does seem to be a major preoccupation for many inhabitants of the southern cultural landscape. Stock car fans remember Bobby Allison, the UDC remembers the Lost Cause, black Texans remember Juneteenth, and we all have a holiday »
The shift from party-centered campaigns to candidate-centered campaigns has contributed to the escalation of the costs of running for elective office in the United States. In the modern era, heavy use of television, radio, and direct mail has emerged as the primary means with which to communicate with voters. As political scientist Frank Sorauf observed, »
“Alabama politics is not about Democrats and Republicans; it’s about plaintiff lawyers and big business.” The image of Alabama and its politics—from dogs and hoses in Birmingham, to George Wallace standing in the doorway of the university in Tuscaloosa, to a Gadsden judge who insists on hanging the Ten Commandments in his courtroom—is negative, primitive, and redneck. But »
“‘No shirt, no sleeves, no service. . . . No guns.’” My buddy Floyd is a native of Wisconsin. He’s half Minnesotan and half Wisconsinite, which makes him half German and half Norwegian and about six-feet nine-inches of Aryan genetics. It’s impossible not to attract attention when traveling with Floyd. I’m going to have a »
“It will surprise no one to see that the two big stories of the twentieth-century South are the transition from an agricultural to an urban society and the transformation effected by the Civil Rights movement.” Spring 2001’s South Polls unveiled our list of “The Twenty Most Influential Southerners of the Twentieth Century.” Mike Burg, president »
“One of the best ways to play the game is avoid confrontation. The next is to make the adversary ridiculous.” John B. McLendon Jr. was one of the most talented and influential basketball coaches of the twentieth century. He first made his mark at Durham’s North Carolina College, now North Carolina Central University, where he »