Vol. 5, No. 4: Winter 1999

Vol. 5, No. 4: Winter 1999

This winter we have Dorris Betts on Eudora Welty, John Shelton Reed on race, Shannon Ravenel on Good Ol’ Girls, James C. Cobb on country music, Sarah E. Gardner on women’s Civil War novels, and John Michael Vlach on plantation architecture.

Front Porch: Winter 1999

by Harry L. Watson

"If changing popular memories undermine the basis for a distinctive southern culture, it will happen because southerners don't need one any more, assuming they really had one in the first place."

Killers Real and Imagined

by Doris Betts

"Real-life tragedy is the genesis for lasting art when the murder of Medgar Evers sparks the muse of Eudora Welty."

Every Man Has Got the Right to Get Killed?: The Civil War Narratives of Mary Johnston and Caroline Gordon

by Sarah E. Gardner

"The vivid—and graphic—novels of two women authors usher in new views of the War and redefine a genre."

Rednecks, White Socks, and Piña Coladas?: Country Music Ain’t What It Used to Be . . . And It Really Never Was

by James C. Cobb

"Does old Hank really spin in his grave each time Garth Brooks launches a new mega-tour?"

The Plantation Tradition in an Urban Setting: The Case of the Aiken-Rhett House in Charleston, South Carolina

by John Michael Vlach

"Rural architecture in a city environment imbues function and form with distinct meaning."

Good Ol’ Girls (Review)

by Shannon Ravenel

A play from Mojo Productions, in association with Company Carolina and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Department of Communication Studies, performed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 18 March–11 April 1999

To Conserve a Legacy American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities by Richard J. Powell and Jock Reynolds, and: Art in Mississippi 1720–1980 by Patti Carr Black (Review)

by Dale Volberg Reed

The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1999; University Press of Mississippi, 1998

Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers by Nancy C. Parrish (Review)

by Amy Thompson McCandless

Louisiana State University Press, 1998

Selling Tradition Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930–1940 by Jane S. Becker (Review)

by Maria R. Miller

University of North Carolina Press, 1998

A Fabric of Defeat The Politics of South Carolina Millhands, 1910–1948 by Bryant Simon (Review)

by Alex Lichtenstein

University of North Carolina Press, 1998

Pastoral and Politics in the Old South by John M. Grammer (Review)

by Mark G. Malvasi

Louisiana State University Press, 1997

Brushing Back Jim Crow The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South by Bruce Adelson (Review)

by Steven F. Lawson

University Press of Virginia, 1999

Music From the Lost Provinces Old-Time Stringbands from Ashe County, North Carolina & Vicinity, 1927–1931, and: Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, vols. 1–3 (Music Review)

by Gavin James Campbell

Old Hat, 1999; County, 1998

Big Joe Williams and Friends Going Back to Crawford, and: Black Appalachia String Bands, Songsters and Hoedowns (Music Review)

by Gavin James Campbell

Arhoolie, 1999; Rounder, 1999

Black Texicans Balladeers and Songsters of the Texas Frontier, and: Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls (Music Review)

by Gavin James Campbell

Rounder, 1999; Rounder, 1999

Taquachito Nights Conjunto Music From South Texas (Music Review)

by Gavin James Campbell

Smithsonian Folkways, 1999

The Central Theme

by John Shelton Reed

"The old cardinal test of a southerner was a commitment to white supremacy. Plus: a special update on the use of "black" versus "African American."