SCHEDULE OF READINGS
(All readings are to be completed on the day they are listed.)

WEEK 1 – Intro 
THUR, 31 AUG

WEEK 2 – What is the South?
TUES, 5 SEPT Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory, 1-11 (course pack, CP); Walker Percy, “Mississippi: The Fallen Paradise,” Harper’s Magazine, April 1965, 166-172 (CP)

Set 1: Answer two from each section (six total).

Section A: Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory, 1-11 (course pack, CP)

1. According to Fitzhugh Brundage what is the problem of “southern” identity?  How did Mississippi Governor James K. Vardaman express it? 

2. What is “historical memory”?

3. Why is forgetting as important as remembering when it comes to historical memory?

4. Describe the role of public space in the formation of historical memory.

Section B: Walker Percy, “Mississippi: The Fallen Paradise,” Harper’s Magazine, April 1965, 166-172 (CP)

5. What did the novelst and Mississippi native Walker Percy mean when he called the efforts of the University Grays "honorable"?  Do you agree with him?  Why or why not?

6. How did Percy contrast the Civil War generation with that of the 1960s?

7. What made Mississippi "insane" in Percy's view?

Section C:

8.  What are the "words without meaning"?

9. Describe what Percy is refering to concerning the "victory of the Snopeses."

10.  How could peace be restored to Mississippi? 

11.  What do these two pieces from Brundage and Percy tell us about the South's relationship to its past? 
 

Set 2: Answer one question from each section. 

Section A: Jeanette Keith, The South, 1-13

1. Historian Jeanette Keith asks “Why study the South?” (2)  How does she answer that? 

2. Why is race so central to the region’s history?

3. Keith quotes Virginian Thomas Jefferson, who remarked that southerners were “zealous for their own liberties, but trampling on those of others” (12).  Unpack that statement.

Section B: Major Problems in the History of the American South, chpt. 1. 

4. Southern journalist W. J. Cash wrote that while it is true that there “are many Souths, the fact remains that there is also one South” (2).  Explain that comment.

5. What are some of the legends of the Old South, according to Cash.

6. What does it mean to describe the “mind” of a region?  Is that a useful concept?

7. In C. Vann Woodward’s estimation, what was the central theme of southern history?

8. What did Woodward think of Cash’s thesis? 

Section C:

9. David Smiley noted that the central theme of southern history was “the quest for the central theme” (8).  How and why was that the case? 

10. In Smiley’s account, how did the early 20th century historian U. B. Phillips contribute to the debate?

11. Describe the “environmental view” of southern history.  Is it plausible?  Could similar arguments be made concerning other regions of the U. S.? 

Section D:

12. Summarize the role honor and violence have played in the South’s past.

13. In Rice University professor John Bole’s opinion why has consensus been so difficult for southern historians to reach?

14. According to Boles, what are some of the illusions and myths surrounding the region’s past? 

WEEK 3 - The South after the Wah
TUES, 12 SEPT Keith, The South, 14-45; Major Problems, chpt. 2

Set 3: Answer two questions from section A and one question each from B, C, and D. 

Section A: Keith, The South, 14-45

1. Keith writes that “History does not change . . . .  However, the way that historians interpret events often does change.”  How did the views of Reconstruction historians change over the decades?

2. Did the federal government fail at Reconstruction?  Did Reconstruction go too far, or not far enough?

3. What was President Andrew Johnson’s view of Reconstruction?  How and why did he clash with northern congressmen? 

4. Answer Keith’s question from page 29: “Why, then, the long memory of Reconstruction as a period of degradation, humiliation, and ‘torture’?” 

5. How were southern politicians and other leaders finally able to “redeem” their state governments? 

Section B: Major Problems, chpt. 2

6. According to the editors of Major Problems, “The two most important political and social questions facing the nation after the Civil War were how to bring the former 
Confederate states back into the Union and how to ensure civil liberties to the newly freed slaves” (29).  How did Congress address these important issues? 

7. How did white and black southerners respond to the new order of the post Civil War South?  What impact did the Freedman’s Bureau and the KKK have on the process of reconstruction?

8. What was the purpose of the Military Reconstruction Act?  What does it imply about white former Confederates?

9. Describe the response of southern African Americans to the new rights such as marriage.

Section C:

10. Why did the writer of the newspaper article denounce Reconstruction? (34)  What factors were especially irksome? 

11. Judging from the document “Congressional Testimony on the Ku Klux Klan, 1871,” what was the basic purpose of the Klan?  Explain the tactics Klansmen and Red Shirts used.

12. After reading “The Marriage Covenant Is at the Foundation of All Our Rights,” how does Laura F. Edwards argue that marriages and families forcefully justified the civil and political rights of former slaves?  What role did gender play in this?

Section D: 

13. In the early 1900s, historians of the US South often condemned the “carpetbagger” as a rank opportunist and a scoundrel.  In 1927, one of these historians, Henry T. 
Thompson, described these new arrivals from the north as swarming like “locusts” into South Carolina: “Men utterly without character as a rule, they were contemptuously 
termed ‘carpetbaggers,’” implying that all that these rogues owned could be carried in a cheap carpetbag.  How does William C. Harris challenge this view in “Carpetbaggers in Reality”? 

14. Finally, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, what role did blacks play in Reconstruction?  What was the effect of violence on Reconstruction politics?

(WED, 13 SEPT - last day to add/drop a course)

THUR, 14 SEPT Thomas Nelson Page, Marse Chan, 343-360 (CP); David Blight, Race and Reunion, 211-254 (CP)

Set 4: Answer one question from each section

Section A: Thomas Nelson Page, Marse Chan, 343-360 (CP)

1. In Thomas Nelson Page’s story, how did Sam and Marse Chan interact?  What was there relationship like?

2. In the character Sam’s telling what was life like in the Old South?  Why?

3.  Page’s Marse Chan captures many of the qualities of a southern gentleman.  What are those? 

4. How did the war change life on Sam’s plantation? 

Section B: Page, Marse Chan, 343-360 (CP) and David Blight, Race and Reunion, 211-254 (CP)

5. The literary historian Martha Jane Nadell describes Thomas Nelson Page’s work as “shot through with nostalgia for an imaginary and idyllic Southern past, when masters were benevolent and slaves devoted” (Nadell, Enter the New Negroes: Images of Race in American Culture, 2004, 14).  Why was it “idyllic”? 

6. Why does Yale historian David Blight describe literature as “a powerful medium for reuniting the interests of Americans from both the North and the South”? (211) 

7. In Blight’s assessment, Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs do not fit in with other sentimental works on the Civil War from this era.  Why?

Section C: Blight, Race and Reunion

8.  Explain what Blight means when he writes: “In this new understanding, the war had become an affair of states, and not of race and ideology” (216).

9. Northern author Albion Tourgée became a vocal critic of reconciliationist literature.  How did he oppose it?

10.  What was the “new religion of nationhood” that writers created in the late 1800s? (221)

Section D: 
11. According to Blight, why were authors like Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris so incredibly successful? 

12. How did the work of historian Wilbur Siebert contrast with the output of romance novelists? 

13.  “No one wrote with more disillusion about the war than Ambrose Bierce,” Blight remarks (244).  Explain.

14. Similarly, Blight characterizes the work of W. E. B. Du Bois: “No writer offered a more artful challenge to the hegemony of Lost Cause ideology . . . .” (251).  Discuss Du Bois’s argument. 
 

Over the course of the semester, you will need to write two short book reviews (2 pgs).  Remember, you will be graded on style, form, and content.  If you are completing the book review for this assignment, answer one of the questions below and read this writing guide for further details.  Make sure to indicate on your paper which question (1-3) you answer.

1. Throughout his journey, Tony Horwitz encounters a profound sense of Southern grievance, a feeling that the region is still looked down on. How does he reveal this throughout the book.  Is this Southern paranoia or a justifiable response to the way the region is regarded by the North and by Hollywood? 

2. Horwitz begins the book by wondering why his immigrant great-grandfather became obsessed by the Civil War. Does he ever answer this question? Why are so many Americans with no blood ties to the War nonetheless fascinated by it?  How are the characters in the book fascinated by the war?  Provide clear examples. 

3. Since the book's publication, Horwitz has been attacked by both right-wing and left-wing Southerners who think he is either an apologist for Confederate heritage or a sworn enemy of it. Overall, do you think he is fair? Too fair?  Why?

Questions taken from the Vintage Books site

THUR, 21 SEPT - NO CLASS

WEEK 5 – The New South Laborer and the Agrarian Revolt
TUES, 26 SEPT Keith, 46-87; Major Problems, chpt. 4, 89-102 

Set 5: Answer one question from each section.

Section A: Keith, 46-87

1. Who was Henry Grady?  What made him one of the greatest promoters of the so-called New South?

2. Describe the basic ways in which the southern economy changed from the 1880s to the early 1900s.  How would these transformations alter the lives of southerners?

3. Southern historians have described the post-Civil War cotton economy as a “vortex.”  How does that term apply? 

4. What were some of the forces that led to disfranchisement, segregation, and anti-black violence from the 1890s forward? 

Section B: Keith, 46-87 and Major Problems, chpt. 4, 89-102 

5. Keith notes that populists placed “class issues ahead of race” (83).  How did that development change the political process in the region?  What divisions resulted from the populists uprising?

6. Jeanette Keith introduces chapter 2 with these questions: “What, then, was ‘new’ about the ‘New South’?  Did the New South movement mark the final surrender of southern culture to the industrial North?  Or was the New South as distinctively different from the rest of the nation as the Old South had been?” (46)  How might one answer these?

7.  Looking at Henry Grady and D. A. Tompkins arguments (90-94), what was the agenda of New South promoters?  What would the New South look like, according to these two?  From what they stated, how might you describe what is often called the "Myth of the New South"? 

Section C:

8. The early 20th century historian Broadus Mitchell offers an interpretation of the boom in cotton mills during the late 19th century (94-95).  According to Mitchell, what benefits would southern towns gain from cotton mills?  Why were industrial leaders and prominent southern figures so drawn to industrial development?  Max Weber, an ealrly 20th century sociologist, argued that capitalism and Protestant morality were directly linked together.  How does this selection by Mitchell confirm Weber's position? 

9. Judging from the selection by the black entrepreneur, Warren C. Coleman, how would industrial development benefit African Americans in the South?  (96-97)  How would it uplift the race, as Coleman suggests. 

Section D:

10. Actual mill workers, so it seems, had a much different perspective than boosters of southern industry and wealthy tycoons.  (97-98)  Why were the North Carolina mill workers dissatisfied with their jobs.  What were their specific grievances?  Would these same kinds of working arrangments be legal today? 

11. Bertha Miller recounts her move from the country life in North Carolina to a factory work at a very young age.  What was life like for poor families in these new mill villages?  How does Miller's life contrast with the lives of teens and young people today? 

THUR, 28 SEPT Major Problems, chpt. 4, 102-123

Set 6: Answer one question from each section.

Section A:

1. How did C. Vann Woodward challenge the many myths of New South industrialization?  (102-105) 

2. A major theme of Woodward’s work involved the discontinuity of southern history.  What does Woodward find discontinuous about southern industrialism?  What examples did he offer to prove his case? 

3. How did Woodward counter Broadus Mitchell (p. 94)?

Section B:

4. Based on the article "The Lives and Labors of the Cotton Mill People," (105-113) in what ways did mill bosses try to control or manage the lives of workers?

5. Why can historians no longer describe southern laborers as passive and docile?  How did these workers resist the negative effects of industrialization? 

6. Explain the ways World War I marked a turning point for the southern textile industry?

Section C:

7. What did the mill workers studied by the authors hope to achieve?  Were they successful? 

8. In the final piece, Daniel Letwin examines the interracial unionism of Alabama's coalfield workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (113-123)  According to most historians, this period marks the high point of Jim Crow segregation and white supremacy.  How, then, did southern laborers in Alabama resist Jim Crow and unite across racial lines? 

9. What role did woman play in these efforts?  What groups were involved in this unionization?  Why was it that the more closely a place was linked to sexuality, the more likely that place was to be segregated?

Set 7: Answer one from each section.

Section A:

1. How does the first letter to the Southern Mercury, the official journal of the Texas state Farmers’Alliance, show that the Farmers’ Alliance acted as much as a social 
organization as a political organization?  What activities took place at this meeting?  (pgs. 125-126)

2. On page 126, one writer to the Mercury offers a challenge to those women who would champion “woman’s rights.”  Why did this writer oppose “woman’s rights”?

3. How does the author of the letter titled “Where Shall We Look for Help?” respond to the more conservative position on women’s rights?  How does she use the arguments of Frances Willard?

Section B:

4. The 1890s proved a particularly difficult time for farmers, especially those in the bleak South.  According to the North Carolina farmers quoted in “Farmers Describe the 
Crisis,” what were some of the issues that sparked the agrarian revolt?(128-30) 

5. What suggestions did the farmers offer to improve the monetary system, farming, and economic relations?  Were the demands these farmers made too radical for America in the 1890s?  Why or why not?

6. At the National Farmers’ Alliance convention in Ocala, Florida (1890) delegates adopted the Ocala Platform.(130-31)  What did the platform demand?  How would it aid 
farmers? 

7. Socialism, by one definition, is a “political system of communal ownership: a political theory or system in which the means of production and distribution are controlled by the people and operated according to equity and fairness rather than market principles.”  Did the Ocala Platform represent agrarian socialism?

Section C: 

8. Tom Watson, a Populist US senator from Georgia, offered his solution to the nettlesome problem of race relations in the South of the 1890s.(131-33)  Why did Watson call for blacks and whites to unite across the “color line”?  Why would a white man choose to leave the Democratic Party and join the People’s Party? 

9. How did the author of “A Populist Speaker Responds” argue that the Democratic Party exploited race for political gains? (133-34)

10. Dewey W. Grantham, “Forging the Solid South” (135-143).  According to Grantham, how did the Democratic Party unite the South in a “one-party” system? 

Section D:

11. Why were the Readjusters, the Farmers’ Alliance, and the Populist Party all unable to unseat white southern Democracy?  What does Grantham mean by “Herrenvolk democracy”? 

12. What role did the Civil War play in the maintenance of a one-party South.  To the best of your understanding, how and why have things changed since the 1950s?

13. Edward Ayers, “Alliances and Populists” (143-53).  What does Ayers indicate were some of the difficulties members of the Farmers’ Alliance faced when they attempted to draw blacks and whites into the same organization?  What motivated the members of the Colored Farmers Alliance? 

14. Why did Tom Watson become the center of controversy in 1890s Georgia?  Ayers contends that racial unification during hard economic times was fairly fluid.  Why was this the case?

Set 8: Answer one from two of any of the sections and then two from one.

Section A:

1. “Ida B. Wells Reports the Horrors of Lynching in the South, 1892.”  Ida B. Wells challenged the prevailing white southern view on lynching.  Contrary to white opinion, what does Wells argue were the root causes of mob violence against black men?  How does she make her case?  What were black men guilty of, in Wells’ estimation? 

2. “Lynching in the United States, 1882-1930.”  What basic generalizations, if any, can be made concerning the figures presented in document two?  How did lynching break down by region and race for the period 1882-1930? 

3. “Literacy Test and Poll Tax, 1899.”  What rules did white supremacists establish in order to eliminate black voting?  Why do you think officials put these impediments in place at this time?

Section B:

4. “Black Leaders Fight Disfranchisement, 1895.”  What did Robert Smalls think of the rise of institutional racism?  How did Smalls claim that African-Americans were indispensable to the South?

5. “Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896.”  How was it that the Plessy v. Ferguson case overrode the  13th and 14th amendments (pg 30)?  What arguments did Supreme Court Justice Brown make concerning this matter?  Why did Justice Harlan dissent?

6. “Democrats Fight Back: The White-Supremacy Campaign, 1898.”  The statements of these reporters were exactly what Ida B. Wells attempted to refute.  How might 
Wells’ have responded to the charges contained in such North Carolina papers? 

Section C:

7. “Walter White Remembers the Atlanta Race Riot, 1906.”  Walter White, who would later serve as head of the NAACP, recalls the violence and terror of the 1906 Atlanta race riot.  What caused this atrocity, according to White?  What roles did politicians like Hoke Smith and Tom Watson play?  How did White’s family react?

8. Joel Williamson, “A Rage for Order.”  What does Williamson mean by the “rage for order” which dominated race relations in the US South?  How did blacks and whites 
interact? 

9. David Montejano, “The Culture of Segregation.” According to Montejano, how did a culture of segregation dominate the ways both Anglos and Mexican-Americans thought about race?  How did whites rationalize “Mexican” inferiority?

WEEK 7 – The Jim Crow South
TUES, 10 OCT Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness, 3-11 (CP); Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South, 48-85 (CP)

Set 9: Answer two from each section. 

Section A:

1. Grace Elizabeth Hale writes that southern cultural historians can “give whiteness a color” (3).  What does she mean?

2. “By the end of Reconstruction,” remarks Hale, “all southern men possessed the same legal rights in the newly reunited nation.  But what would citizenship mean in a world without slaves?” (5)  How does she answer that question?

3. Like Fitzhugh Brundage in Southern Past (2005), Hale focuses some attention on public spaces.  How would ideas about “whiteness” influence the ordering of public space?

4. Why does Hale examine “consumer culture” to better understand race?

Section B:

5. According to Fitzhugh Brundage, why did white mobs lynch black men? 

6. Who was the typical victim of mob violence?  Why? 

7. What role did a sense of white southern honor play in the collective mentality of white mobs? 

8. What were some of the root causes of white mob violence in the South?

9. What does Brundage mean by “ritualized collective behavior” (78)?

THUR, 12 OCT David M. Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

Over the course of the semester, you will need to write two short book reviews (2 pgs).  Remember, you will be graded on style, form, and content.  If you are completing the book review for this assignment, answer one of the questions below and read this writing guide for further details.  Make sure to indicate on your paper which question (1-3) you answer.

1. How could emancipation be “worse than slavery?”  Explain David Oshinsky's argument in relation to this question.

2. How and why did the Mississippi justice system target and criminalize African-Americans?  What made the state unique both in the South and in the United States?  Be sure to describe how Parchman Farm epitomized the Mississippi system. 
 

THUR, 19 OCT Keith, The South, 88-123; Major Problems, chpt. 7

Set 10: Answer one question from each section.

Section A: 

1. What was “progressivism”?  What were its religious roots?

2. Describe some of the reforms progressives took on in the South.  According to Keith, why did they do so?

3. To what/whom is Keith referring when she discusses “progressive racists”?

Section B:

4. How did African American progressivism differ from its white counterpart?

5. How did WW I and the 1920s alter southern culture?  Describe some of the many ways southerners responded to the changes wrought by modernity/modernism.  How would religion help southerners defend themselves against the onslaughts of “secularism” and “modernism”?

6. “Two Hymns.”  What is the message of “Steal Away to Jesus”?  Why did this type of gospel music appeal to slaves and ex-slaves?  What is the main theme of the white hymn, “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder”?  Why did southern whites embrace this view?

Section C:

7. “W. E. B. Du Bois on the Faith of the Fathers, 1903.”  While W. E. B. Du Bois taught school in rural Tennessee he marveled at the spirituality of rural blacks.  What did Du Bois find so captivating about black religion?  What role did African American churches play in black communities? 

8. “Sermon of John Lakin Brasher.”  Judging from this sermon written by the holiness preacher John Lakin Brasher (1868-1971), how is a person saved and sanctified?

9. “Lillian Smith on Lessons About God and Guilt.”  Lillian Smith, an early champion of civil rights and social justice in the South, rejected the pronouncements of ministers like Brasher.  How did Smith argue that southern evangelical Christianity contradicted itself? 

Section D:

10. “U.D.C. Catechism for Children, 1912”; Elizabeth Hayes Turner, “Women, Religion, and the Lost Cause.”  The historian Elizabeth Hayes Turner suggests that the Lost Cause allowed southern women to “practice a kind of self-delusion,” and “to pretend that the South held no imperfections. . .” (210).  What does Turner mean by this statement?  According to Turner’s article and the U.D.C. catechism, why did daughters of the confederacy feel it necessary to rewrite the South’s history? 

11. “Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin on the Lost Cause”; Charles Reagan Wilson, “The Lost Cause as Civil Religion.”  The anthropologist Clifford Geertz held that myths give humans meaning, direction, and purpose.  How does Charles Reagan Wilson argue that the Lost Cause gave meaning to southerners?  Why was this ideology of defeat important to Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin and her family? 

12. Paul Harvey, “Redeeming the South.”  Paul Harvey, a historian at the University of Colorado, suggests that there is not one type of evangelical in the South.  For Harvey, why is it inaccurate to over generalize evangelicals?  What beliefs and practices tended to divide black and white Baptists? 

Set 11: Answer one from two of the sections and two from the remaining.

Section A:

1. In Samuel Hill’s estimation, what is the “central theme” of southern religion?

2. How did Baptist theology influence religion in the region?

3. What does Hill mean by a “problem-solution” line of religious reasoning? (78)

4. In the last pages of this chapter, Hill discusses the importance of emotion to faith in the South.  Describe this connection.

Section B:

5. Why does Robert Orsi comment that “the history of the study of religion is also always a political history . . . .”? (178)

6. Do you agree with Orsi’s comments about the 9/11 hijackers?  Why or why not?

7. What attracted the journalist Dennis Covington to the snake handlers of the South?

8. What does Orsi means by good/bad religion and how has that concept developed in the study of religion? (183)  Why does Orsi remark that “Fear was central to the academic installation of religious studies”? (186)

Section C:

9. Explain what Orsi means when he challenges: “Any approach to religion that foregrounds ethical issues . . . obstructs our understanding of religious idioms because religion at its root has nothing to do with morality” (191).  Do you agree?  Does Hill’s argument differ here?

10. Why are evangelical historians the most severe contemporary critics of religious studies?

11. What is the “postcolonial critique” and how does it differ from the position of evangelical historians?

12. How does Orsi try to resolve the problem of studying a figure like the snake-handling “Punkin’ Brown”? 

(WED, 25 OCT – Deadline to change to pass/fail or audit.  Deadline to withdraw from a course.) 

THUR, 26 OCT Major Problems, chpt. 9, pgs. 255-271, 277-285

Set 12: Answer one from each section.

Section A:

1. “Rebecca Latimer Felton Endorses Prohibition, 1895.”  How did Rebecca Latimer Felton use the traditional language of home and motherhood to promote the cause of prohibition?  Why do you think she used this language?  What, in Felton’s opinion, made legalized drinking so dangerous? 

2. “Anita Julia Cooper's ‘Voice from the South,’ 1892.”  According to Anita Julia Cooper, what were some of the problems black women activists faced when they sought to better the condition of their gender?  What role does Cooper argue black women should play in society?

Section B:

3. “Mary Church Terrell Speaks on the Role of Modern Woman.”  Mary Church Terrell, a charter member and president of the National Association of Colored Women, became nationally known for her support of women's suffrage and her opposition to Jim Crow.  In this selection, how does Terrell try to inspire her audience?  What arguments does Terrell make to support her cause?

4. “Anitsuffragists Raise the Race issue.”  Why does this author suggest that the suffrage issue will reopen the matter of black suffrage? 

5. “Annie Webb Blanton Runs for State Office, 1918.”  How does this piece of campaign literature for political candidate Annie Webb Blanton make the case that Blanton would be the best for the office?  Does she make a strong case?

Section C:

6. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, “Womanhood, Race, and the WCTU, 1881-1898.”  Yale historian Glenda Gilmore contends that women’s groups, colleges, and the WCTU proved critical in the political education of black and white southern women.  Why were these organizations so significant for both races? 

7. How did the groups Gilmore studies bring about the politicization of southern women? 

8. What did interracial cooperation mean to black women?  What did it mean to white women?  What eventually became of this interracial work? 

Section D: 

9. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, “The Woman Suffrage Movement in the Inhospitable South.”  What does Marjorie Spruill Wheeler mean by the “inhospitable South”?  What obstacles did women suffragists face in the former Confederacy? 

10. Because of the basic challenges, what sort of women did the movement attract?  How dose Wheeler reveal that issues of race informed the debate on woman’s right to vote?

WEEK 10 – Gender, cont., and the Modern South
TUES, 31 OCT Major Problems, chpt. 8, 241-253; Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920, 38-55 (CP); “Emancipated Woman,” Christian Advocate, 30 May 1895, 3 (CP); Annie May Fisher, Women Preachers, 3-9 (circa. 1900) (CP)

Set 13: Answer one from each section.

Section A:

1. In William Link's estimation (Major Problems, chpt. 8, 241-253, CP), why have historians continued to debate the nature of southern progressivism?

2. How does Link shift attention away from the political and biographical element of progressivism?

3. In what sense did "localism" alter the course of southern progressivism?

Section B: 

4. Historian Ted Ownby suggests that towns in the late 19th century South held deep symbolic importance.  How were towns havens for masculine pursuits and "manly" activities?  How did men asset their masculinity in southern towns? 

5. What did some of these southern "main streets" look like?

6. How did southern evangelicals react to the threats that town life seemed to pose?

7. What might a female prohibitionist--such as the Georgian, Rebecca Latimer Felton (Major Problems, pg. 256)--have thought about male activities in these small communities?  Why?

Section C:

8. Both Annie May Fisher and the author of the editorial in the Christian Advocate use scripture to back up there arguments.  How does each do so?

9. Do either authors use non-biblical sources, examples?  If so, how do they employ them?

THUR, 2 NOV Major Problems, chpt. 10; Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (1952), 3-33 (CP); Turn in a one to two page abstract for your final research paper, describing what your major thesis will be and highlighting what you hope to achieve.  See this guide to writing abstracts on the University of North Carolina’s writing center webpage: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/abstracts.html.  Your abstract grade will be deducted five points for every day it is overdue.

Set 14: Answer one from each section. 

Read this entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia for info on Wise Blood.

Section A:

1. Who is Hazel Motes?  What kind of a southerner is he?  How does he interact with others on the train? 

2. Is there any significance to the characters’ names in Wise Blood?

3. How does Motes’s recall his hometown, Eastrod?

Section B:

4. Literary critics describe Flannery O’Connor’s South as “Christ haunted.”  What does that mean in the context of Wise Blood?

5. Explain Motes’s changing view of Jesus and Christianity.  What accounted for his reversal? 

6.  In the New Georgia Encyclopedia, John Inscoe and Jan Whitt write that “Many of the novel's characters are grotesques, a term in southern literature for those who are known for their exaggerated attributes, unusual characteristics, or obsessive-compulsive thought processes or behaviors.”  In what sense are the characters in Wise Blood grotesques?

Section C:

7. What is Hazel Motes doing in Taulkinham?

8. Describe Motes’s conversation with the girl and the blind man.  Why do you think O’Connor included this in the novel?

WEEK 11 – Southern Music and Images of the South in Popular Culture 
TUES, 7 NOV Keith, The South, 124-155; Major Problems, chpt. 11, 319-320, 324-327, 339-346; Peter Applebome, Dixie Rising, 4-22 (CP)

Set 15: Answer one from each section.

Section A:

1. How did the Depression alter the American South?  How did its that compare with other sections of the U. S.?  As a result, what role would the federal government come to play in the region?

2. How did southern politicians like W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, Huey Long, or Harry Byrd respond to the desperate economic crisis? 

3. A host of new left-wing groups grew in the 1930s South.  What did political and labor radicals demand?

4. Did World War II change the South as much as the Civil War did?

Section B: 

5. Describe Huey Long’s plan for the nation in 1933 (Major Problems, 319).  Was this a viable option for America?

6. What were living conditions like for the Goodwin family? (324-27)  What kind of life did Mollie have?

7. According to historian James C. Cobb, how did WW II change the southern economy?

8. What impact did the war have on southern music?  How did southern writers respond to the sweeping changes of the era? 

Section C:

9. Journalist Peter Applebome writes that “the most striking aspect of American life at the century’s end . . . is how much the country looks like the South” (6).  What evidence—political, religious, cultural—does Applebome offer to prove this statement? 

10.  Why has the South been so important to the post-1960s conservative revolution?

11. How has Hollywood tended to portray the South?  Describe the impact of southern music on the national scene?
 

Set 16: Answer one from each section.

Section A:

1. Bill Malone and David Stricklin begin this chapter by noting that “World War II wrought revolutionary changes in the social structure of the South and the nation at large” (90).  How would such changes alter the landscape of southern music? 

2. How did the country music industry in the 1930s and 40s broaden its appeal to a larger audience? 

3. The authors suggest that “Rhythm and blues was a powerful contributor to the breaking down of racial barriers in the United States” (98).  How were these barriers broken down?

Section B:

4. What do Malone and Strickland mean when they contend that rock ‘n’ roll first burst onto the national scene with a “southern accent”? (102) 

5. How did southern rock fuse various musical styles?

6. Brian Ward writes that British fans of southern music perceived black and white southerners as “rebels.”  How so?

7. What were some of the stereotypical views the British audience had about southern music and culture in the early 1950s? 

Section C:

8. How did traditional jazz revivalists in the UK adopt a southern mystique?

9. What was skiffle and how was it influenced by southern styles?

10. How did British fans and artists become aware of the social problems of the South? 

11. Describe the impact Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and other early rockers had on Great Britain. 

WEEK 12  – The Civil Rights Movement 
TUES, 14 NOV Richard Wright, Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth, 3-160

Set 16: Answer one from each section. (Questions adopted from Harper Collins).  If you are using Black Boy to write your short or long book review, answer one of the questions below with a * next to it.

Section A: 

*1. In one of his first contacts with whites, Richard Wright feels himself tensing up with confusion and suspicion over how to act. What were the various forms that tension took in the course of Black Boy. How, do the young black men who Wright associates with cope with racism and oppression?  Does Wright glimpse any relief from the tension? 

2. How did the young Richard Wright perceive whites?  How would those views change as he aged?

*3. Wright writes: "I used to mull over the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, how unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in genuine passion we were, how void of great hope, how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow our memories, how lacking we were in those intangible sentiments that bind man to man, and how shallow was even our despair." Taken out of context, this reads like a terrible damnation of the African-American soul. How does the meaning of these words change when read in the context of the book - and the context of Wright's own youth? Do you feel this selection of the book justifies this criticism of African-Americans - or is this passage a sign of Wright's self-hatred, condescension, or his lack of sympathy with the essence of black culture? 

Section B:

4. Why was Wright skeptical about the traditional religion of his family?  How does he react to their attempts to draw him into their fold?

*5. When it was published in 1945, Black Boy was read primarily as an attack on the violence and oppression of the Jim Crow South; during the 1960s, critics began to focus on the sensibility of the narrator - how his experiences shaped him, how he found his voice and satisfied his yearning for expression. Which view of the memoir feels most on target to you? 

Section C:

6. Several years before he died, Wright wrote, "I declare unabashedly that I like and even cherish the state of abandonment and aloneness...it seems the natural, inevitable condition of man, and I welcome it..." Discuss this statement in the light of Black Boy. 

*7. To what extent is Richard rebelling against the powerful role of women in southern black families? Do you think Wright is a misogynist, as some critics have written? Are there any men in the book to whom Richard feels close or to whom he turns for guidance or mentoring? 

THUR, 16 NOV - NO CLASS

WEEK 13 – The Civil Rights Movement, cont. 
TUES, 21 NOV Keith, The South, 157-203; Major Problems, chpt. 12

Set 17: Answer one question from each section.

Section A:

1. What were some of the basic changes the South underwent as a result of the Cold War?  What impact did that international conflict have on race matters?

2. Some historians write that the Brown vs. Topeka decision was most import for the conservative reaction it brought about.  Explain how that might be. 

3. Answer Jeanette Keith’s questions: “How did the people of the Civil Rights Movement win their victories, and what kind of victories did they win?” (158)

4. What role did religion play in the civil rights movement?

Section B:

5. Did national political leaders tend to help or hinder civil rights?

6. “Melton McLaurin Recalls Segregation.”  Growing up in Wade, NC, in the 1950s, Martin McLaurin early developed a race consciousness.  How did McLauren interact with black youths?  What does he describe as “one of the most shattering emotional experiences of my young life”? (353) Why did McLaurin find this so traumatic?

7. “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 1954.” In 1954, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren asked: “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race. . . deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities?” (355)  How did the Supreme Court answer?  Why?  How did this overturn Plessy v. Ferguson?

8. “The Southern Manifesto, 1956.”  The “Southern Manifesto” represented massive resistance to the Brown decision.  Signed by 19 Senators and 81 Representatives from the South, the document fiercely opposed desegregation.  Why did the signers regard the Supreme Court as abusing its judicial power?  How could segregation be justified on legal and cultural grounds? 

Section C:

9. “Jo Ann Gibson Robinson on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955.”  According to Jo Ann Gibson’s account, how was the Montgomery bus boycott a community affair?  How did Gibson involve her students?

10. “Letter from Alabama Clergy, 1963.”  What arguments do the signers of this letter make in opposition to the boycotts initiated in Birmingham, AL?  Why? 

11. “Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963.”  What reasons did Martin Luther King, Jr. offer for his presence in Birmingham?  How did King respond to critics who counseled civil rights participants to “wait” for reforms to be enacted over the long term? 

12. “SNCC Position Paper: Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 1964.”  What does this list, compiled by a female worker in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, say about gender issues among civil rights workers?

Section D:

13. “David L. Chappell, White Southerners and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”  According to David Chappell, why did members of Montgomery’s white establishment view King and the Montgomery Improvement Association as a serious threat? 

14. How does Chappell indicate that white supremacists lacked the kind of unity that was so vital to the civil rights movement? 

15. “Clayborne Carson, Black Freedom Struggles.”  How does Clayborne Carson show that the black freedom struggle was a local matter? 

16. What materials and groups should historians look at when studying the civil rights movement?

WEEK 14 – The Republican Revolution in the South 
TUES, 28 NOV Keith, The South, 205-216; Major Problems, chpt. 13

Set 18: Answer one from each section. 

Section A:

1. In her final chapter what does Keith say about the link between religion and politics in the modern South?

2. What might be an answer to Keith’s question: “Is there really a distinctive South anymore . . . ?” (205)

3. Jimmy Carter's Gubernatorial Inaugural Address, 1971.  How did future president Jimmy Carter lay out a new strategy for the Democratic Party in the South?  What was different about it?

4. Interviews with a Republican and a Democratic Leader, 1981, 1982.  The Republican official interviewed in this selection describes what he calls the “Southern strategy.”  What did that strategy entail?  How did it change over the decades? 

Section B:

5. How do the views of the Democratic Representative from Mississippi differ from the Republican position?  What makes a good politician, according to the second official interviewed? 

6. Andrew Young's State of the City Address, 1989.  Andrew Young, mayor of Atlanta from 1982 to 1989 and close associate of Martin Luther King, Jr., plotted out a new course for Atlanta’s government.  What did Young offer as solutions to the urban South’s many problems?  In Atlanta’s case, was this successful? 

7. Southern Baptists Apologize for Slavery and Racism, 1995.  Throughout the 1990s, a number of political and religious organizations offered collective mea culpas for the wrongs they committed in the past.  How effective was this gesture by the Southern Baptist Convention?  What did it hope to accomplish?

Section C:

8. Republican Party Advances in the South, 1980-1998 (map).  What does this map tell us about the changing demography of southern politics? 

9. David R. Goldfield, “Beyond Race in the Modern South.”  According to Goldfield, how effective was the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision at integrating southern schools? 

10. What steps were taken in the late 1960s and 1970s by both blacks and whites to deal with the school situation?  What role does Goldfield argue religion could play in the debate? 

Section D:

11. Earl Black and Merle Black, “The Vital South.”  Political scientists Earl and Merle Black hold that the “creation of a Solid Republican South in most recent presidential elections has revolutionized the regional dynamics of presidential campaigns.”  How has this been the case?

12. Mark J. Rozell and Clyde Wilcox, “The New Christian Right in Virginia.”  Judging from these authors arguments, what is the “Christian Right”? 

13. Why do sweeping depictions of a monolithic Christian Right misinterpret the movement?  How has the Christian Right shaped American political culture since the 1970s?

THUR, 30 NOV Dan Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994 

If you will be writing your longer, 4-5 page review, provide a synopsis of the book, making sure to discuss Dan Carter's thesis and key points. Critical information on style, form, prose, and grammar for those completing the longer, 4-5 page book review

If you will be turning in a shorter, 1-1.5 page paper or a discussion set, answer one question from section A and two from section B.  You must indicate which assignment you are completing.

Section A

1. What does historian Dan Carter argue Geroge H. W. Bush learned from George Wallace?  Is Carter’s point a fair criticism?

2. As George Wallace ran for governor of Alabama in 1962 why did he turn to the race issue?  How did he use the race in his campaign?

3. Carter suggests that few “nonsoutherners wanted to embrace overt racism in 1963” (6).  If that was so, how did George Wallace appeal to a national political audience?  What is the meaning of this chapter title, “The Politics of Anger”?

4. What elements of Wallace’s strategy did Richard Nixon and his advisors adopt?  What was Nixon’s “southern strategy”?  What do you think about Carter’s claim that “issues of race were interwoven with concerns over social order in American streets”? (29) 

Section B

5. What was the new economic strategy of the so-called “neoconservatives.”  How did “Reaganomics” exemplify this?

6. What were “the politics of symbols”?  How were they used?  How was a figure like Willie Horton used as a political symbol?

7. Carter makes a somewhat cynical contention that “At some point. . . the line between politics and the merchandising of celebrity status was crossed” (81).  Later he adds, “The ingredients that make good campaigns increasingly make poor governance” (86)?  Do you think that is true? 

8. What were the “politics of righteousness”?  How does Carter reveal that Newt Gingrich and new allies of the Republican Party represented this politics of righteousness? 

10. In the preface of Dan Carter’s book he asserts that the “reluctance of neoconservatives to claim [George] Wallace. . . is understandable.”  “But,” Carter continues, “the fundamental differences between the public rhetoric of the Alabama governor and the new conservatism sometimes seem more a matter of style than substance” (xiv).  Do you agree or disagree with this central thesis?  Why or why not?  Be sure to provide strong evidence to support your conclusion.

WEEK 15
TUES, 5 DEC Present final papers in class

THUR, 7 DEC - NO CLASS

WEEK 16
FINAL EXAM
Studyguide for final exam, Monday, 11 December, 10:30-11:45, same classroom