Searching for the Southern Way in a Time of Transition

Abstract

This chapter explores efforts to understand a southern way of life in the 1930s and 1940s, including a liberal reformism associated with the New Deal and the journalists, academics, and creative writers who represented a moderate reform movement. Sociologist Howard Odum gets special attention as a key intellectual and nurturer of the study of the South. Economic activity generated a business way of life, and tourism is especially revealing of its nature. Folk culture and popular culture thrived in these years and showed the tensions between tradition and modernity. A new cultural criticism appeared that skewered the region’s shortcomings, offering critical perspectives and sympathetic interest in poor whites. An interracial movement sought better treatment of African Americans and offered a positive vision of cooperation across racial lines. This chapter examines such key intellectuals as Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, Herman Clarence Nixon, and Charles Johnson whose life stories and thinking illustrate the complexities of a region on the cusp of fundamental change.