"You're Dixie's Football Pride": American College Football and the Resurgence of Southern Identity

Abstract

The end of the American Civil War began a lengthy period of Southern inferiority vis-ˆ-vis the North-a period so lengthy that some Southerners argue that it lasts to this day. Not until Woodrow Wilson's election in 1913 did the United States have a Southern-born president after the Civil War. Southerners sought novel means to assert some degree of superiority over their Northern neighbors. College football became a primary means of reasserting a Southern sense of identity and superiority. In inter-regional games in the 1920s and 1930s, the martial spirit of college football allowed Southerners to reassert their sense of honor, which had been maligned since defeat in the Civil War. As Bertram Wyatt-Brown (1982) has shown, the concept of honor defined Southern males' outlook; secession from the Union and civil war occurred when Southerners perceived Abraham Lincoln's election to the Presidency as the culmination of anti-slavery assaults upon their honor. Such racial definitions of Southern identity became problematic as the civil rights movement gained impetus in the 1950s and 1960s. To remain competitive with teams from other regions, Southern football teams began to recruit black players; The University of Alabama fielded its first black football player in 1971. However, transition from segregation to inclusion has not been easy. Symbols of white Southern pride highlight lingering racial difficulties, as a 1997 controversy over use of the "Rebels" nickname and fans' waving of the Confederate battle flag at The University of Mississippi illustrates. Controversies like this raise troubling questions about Southern identity, namely "Whose South is it?" and "Can expressions of Southern nationalist feelings possibly escape racial implications?"