Interpreting American History: The New South

Description

The concept of the "New South" has elicited fierce debate among historians since the mid-twentieth century. At the heart of the argument is the question of whether the post-Civil War South transformed itself into something genuinely new or simply held firm to patterns of life established before 1861. The South did change in significant ways after the Civil War ended, but many of its enduring trademarks, the most prominent being white supremacy, remained constant well into the twentieth century. Scholars have yet to meet the vexing challenge of proving or disproving the existence of a New South. Even in the twenty-first century, amid the South's sprawling cities, expanding suburbia, and high-tech environment, vestiges of the Old South remain.Bringing order out of the voluminous canon of writing on the New South poses a challenge. The essays here trace the lineaments of historical debate on the most important questions related to the South's history since 1865 and how that argument has changed over time as modernity descended on Dixie. Interpreting American History: The New South consists of essays written by noted scholars that address topics relating to the New South, such as the Populist era, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights Movement, and emerging fields such as Reconstruction in a global context, New South environmental history, and southern women. Each contributor explains clearly and succinctly the winding path historical writing has taken on each of the topics.Interpreting American History: The New South will appeal to a wide range of U.S. history students. Established scholars and nonacademics will also find it to be a valuable source.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• USA
• United States of America
• History of the Americas
• American Civil War
• États-Unis
• Guerre de Sécession

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 19 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631013027
• Langue: English

Extrait

Interpreting American History: The New South
INTERPRETING AMERICAN HISTORY
Brian D. McKnight and James S. Humphreys, series editors
T HE A GE OF A NDREW J ACKSON
Edited by Brian D. McKnight and James S. Humphreys
T HE N EW D EAL AND THE G REAT D EPRESSION
Edited by Aaron D. Purcell
R ECONSTRUCTION
Edited by John David Smith
T HE N EW S OUTH
Edited by James S. Humphreys
INTERPRETING AMERICAN HISTORY
THE NEW SOUTH
Edited by
J AMES S. H UMPHREYS


The Kent State University Press
Kent, Ohio
© 2018 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
A LL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2017016130
ISBN 978-1-60635-315-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN -P UBLICATION D ATA
Names: Humphreys, James Scott, 1963- editor of compilation.
Title: Interpreting American history : the new South / edited by James S. Humphreys.
Description: Kent, Ohio : Kent State University Press, [2017] | Series: Interpreting American history series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017016130 | ISBN 9781606353158 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781631013027 (epub) | ISBN 9781631013034 (epdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Southern States--History--1865-1951. | Woodward, C. Vann (Comer Vann), 1908-1999. Origins of the new South, 1877-1913. | Southern States--Historiography. | Southern States--Social conditions.
Classification: LCC F215 .I58 2017 | DDC 975--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016130
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To Joy
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 New South Historiography James S. Humphreys
2 Reconstruction along the Global Color Line Andrew Zimmerman
3 Populism in the New South Connie L. Lester
4 Lynching and Racial Violence in the New South Sarah L. Silkey
5 Women in the New South Rebecca Montgomery
6 Historians and Unions in the New South Robert H. Zieger
7 The Great Depression and the New South Stephanie A. Carpenter
8 Racial Change and World War II in the New South Jennifer E. Brooks
9 To Redeem the Soul of Dixie Michael T. Bertrand
10 Realigning the Base Michael Bowen
11 The New South and the Natural World Mark D. Hersey and James C. Giesen
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Foreword
Interpreting American History Series
Of all the history courses taught on college campuses, historiography is one of the most challenging. The historiographic essays most often available are frequently too specialized for broad teaching and sometimes too obtuse for the average undergraduate student. Every day, frustrated scholars and students search for writings that offer both breadth and depth in their approach to the historiography of different eras and movements. As young scholars grow more intellectually mature, they remain wedded to the lessons taught within the pages of historiographic studies. As graduate students prepare for seminar presentations, comprehensive examinations, and dissertation work, they often wonder why that void has remained. Then, when they complete the studies and enter the profession, they find themselves less intellectually connected to those ideas of which they once showed a mastery, and they again ask about the lack of meaningful and succinct studies of historiography … and the circle continues.
Within the pages of this series, innovative young scholars discuss the different interpretations of the important eras and events of history, not only focusing on the intellectual shifts that have taken place, but on the various catalysts that drove these shifts. It is the hope of the series editors that these volumes fill those aforementioned intellectual voids and speak to the young scholars in a way that will supplement their other learning; that the same pages that speak to undergraduate students will also remind the established scholar of his or her historiographic roots; that a difficult subject is made more accessible to curious minds; that ideas are not lost among the details offered within the classroom.
B RIAN D. M C K NIGHT , The University of Virginia’s College at Wise J AMES S. H UMPHREYS , Murray State University
Acknowledgments
I greatly appreciate the assistance I received in bringing this book of essays on New South historiography to fruition. Editors at the Kent State University Press, Will Underwood and Joyce Harrison, offered much needed guidance and encouragement throughout the course of this project. Although they demonstrated an abundance of patience, they also urged me when necessary to work harder to see this book through to completion. My sincere thanks go to both of them. I am grateful for copyeditor Will Moore’s painstaking efforts to enhance the quality of this book when it was in manuscript form. Will’s expertise made the finished volume far better than it otherwise would have been. The eleven scholars who contributed chapters have my deepest admiration for the thoughtfulness and exertion they invested in their writing. They all taught me a great deal. Brian D. McKnight, coeditor of the Interpreting American History series, always supported this project and provided helpful insights into how to improve it. Working with such a gifted group of editors and historians was a pleasure and an honor. Finally, I thank my wife, Joy, for enduring along with me the challenges of writing and editing. Joy’s love and support have made those challenges less daunting.
Introduction
The concept of the “New South” has elicited fierce debate among historians since the mid-twentieth century. At the heart of the argument is the question of whether the post–Civil War South transformed into something genuinely new or held firm to patterns of life established before 1861. The South did change in significant ways after the war ended, but many of its enduring trademarks—the most prominent being white supremacy—remained constant well into the twentieth century. Scholars have yet to meet the vexing challenge of proving or disproving the existence of a New South. Even in the twenty-first century, amid the South’s sprawling cities, expanding suburbia, and high-tech environment, vestiges of the Old South remain.
Bringing order out of the voluminous canon of writing on the New South poses a challenge. The essays here trace the lineaments of historical debate on the most important questions related to the South’s history since 1865 and how that argument has changed over time as modernity descended on Dixie. Interpreting American History: The New South consists of essays written by noted scholars who address topics relating to the New South, such as the Populist era, the Great Depression, and the civil rights movement, and emerging fields, such as Reconstruction in a global context, New South environmental history, and southern women. Each contributor explains clearly and succinctly the winding path historical writing has taken on each of the topics.
Andrew Zimmerman, in his essay, argues that Reconstruction in the United States was not an isolated event, but instead had transnational repercussions. Zimmerman illumines aspects of Reconstruction in the United States that were similar to events unfolding simultaneously in other regions of the world. For example, the switch from slave to free labor and the subsequent restrictions to capital placed on the newly freed people during Reconstruction occurred likewise in the Caribbean after British emancipation. Zimmerman also asserts that European colonial leaders adopted practices used in the New South to control blacks socially and economically. German officials, for instance, in building their cotton industry in West Africa, subjected blacks to forms of discrimination first employed in the American South after the Civil War. Rarely have historians viewed Reconstruction in the transnational light Zimmerman provides.
Connie L. Lester examines the history of Populism in an essay that explores what scholars have written about the characteristics of Americans attracted to Populist politics in the late nineteenth century and whether they adhered to traditionalist or modernist thinking. She also analyzes historians’ views on the legacy of Populism to American politics. Many historians, Lester points out, believe Populism’s influence lingered well into the twentieth century. The policies of progressive stalwarts, such as President Woodrow Wilson and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, resembled those of the Populists. Few social and political movements have left such an indelible stamp on American life as Populism.
In a searching essay on racial violence, Sarah L. Silkey reminds readers of what was probably the most shocking aspect of the New South, lynching—a practice, she asserts, employed to produce a pliant black workforce and to reinforce white supremacy following the disruption to the southern economy by the Civil War. Silkey explores a century of both popular and scholarly writing in charting the unfolding of the historiography of lynching. Reform organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, gathered information and statistics related to lynching in the early twentieth century. Historians next began writing monographs on the subject, and then, over the last several decades, scholarly studies on lynching burgeoned to include not only lynching in the South, but in other regions of the country and to focus not only on the crime’s impact on black males, but also black women, and other targets of lynching, such as Mexicans and Asians. Silky explains that historians now portray lynching as not simply a southern phenomenon, but one that occurred in other regions of the United States and in other countries.
Rebecca Montgomery’s essay sheds light on the ways in which historians have evaluated women’s impact on public life in the New South. Montgomery examines, for example, the debate over female suffrage and the efforts that southern women undertook to win