Southern Society Research Articles

Making race, making power: North Carolina's road to disfranchisement

The structuring of Southern voter turnout North Carolina Democratic politics and society in the 1880s, Democratic control through localism making and blocking Republican power the demise of Democratic localism and the rise of Populism the failed alternatives to Democratic rule, movement-party disjunctions in Populism Democrats transformed - democracy undone.

Labor's promised land: radical visions of gender, race, and religion in the South

Labor's Promised Land: Radical Visions of Gender, Race, and Religion in the South. By Mark Fannin. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. Pp. xxiv, 355. Acknowledgments, introduction, conclusion, notes, index. $40.00.) Mark Fannin, who earned his doctorate in history from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, has written a book addressing two serious challenges to the American South's rigorously enforced social (p. ix) during the first half of the twentieth century. The Brotherhood of Timber Workers (BTW), which sprang up in Louisiana just prior to World War I, and Arkansas's Southern Tenant Farmer's Union (STFU), which flourished briefly during the late 1930s, are his examples of an uniquely southern radicalism in the midst of a class structure that existed to guarantee patriarchal control. Fannin maintains, It is the purpose of this work to account for the cooperative efforts of both races to challenge this trend and the systems that promote it and to identify the currents of radicalism which enabled such attempts to take place in an otherwise racially antagonistic and divided, paternalist (p. x). To this end, Fannin establishes a picture of a monolithic southern society that was elitist, paternalistic, hierarchical, viciously racist, and dedicated to the maintenance of an order that exploited workers regardless of race or gender and perpetuated the dominance of a relatively small minority of white men. This structure utilized myths from the Lost Cause, from a courtly love notion of southern womanhood, and from the concept of black shiftlessness and intellectual inferiority to sustain an image of southernism that was critical in guaranteeing regional myopia. Being a southerner was the ultimate role for all white males of the Old Confederacy. According to this mind-set, poor whites might creep up the social ladder, but blacks were different; they were not capable of intellectual enhancement. The BTW and STFU challenged this deeply entrenched hierarchy by attacking the South's mythic views of womanhood, race, and religion. The author follows two general sketches of both unions' radical dynamics with chapters on their respective reactions to specific issues involving gender, blacks, and religion. Fannin contends that the BTW and the STFU undermined the traditional ideal of southern womanhood by involving women in the work of organizing, striking, and, often, policymaking, tasks believed to be inappropriate for true daughters of Dixie. The STFU was far more active in this area than the BTW. Tenant womenfolk were deeply involved in all STFU activities, and many held leadership positions. Race was a more polarizing and dangerous issue. After all, the southern white worker allegedly had little to cherish other than his genetic superiority to his black counterpart. Fannin uses the Ku Klux Klan as a foil for much of this argument, often professing that the Klan's southernism, its secrecy, and above all its rituals provided the BTW and the STFU with much tried and true native equipment. But while the transient nature of timber workers lessened the impact of racial cooperation in the BTW, the STFU recruited both black and white tenants from its inception, achieving full integration of most locals by 1937. Religion was radicalized into a spiritual justification for confrontation by Covington Hall and other mainstays of the BTW. …

Transformation of the South African Media

Extracted from text ... 1 Transformation ransformation of the South African M e d i a Keyan G. Tomaselli+ International Seminars on the Political Economy of the Southern African Media held in 1996, 2000 and 2002 marked significant moments in the trajectory of (Southern) African media scholarship. The first was Identities, Democracy, Culture and Communication in Southern Africa, funded by Media, Culture and Society and the University of Oslo (cf. Teer-Tomaselli and Roome 1997; Hall 1997). The later seminars were hosted jointly by the Graduate Programme in Cultural and Media Studies (CCMS) of the University of Natal, Durban, the World Association for Christian ..

Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern

Wars. Somanywars.Wars outside andwars inside.Culturalwars, science wars, and wars against terrorism.Wars against poverty andwars against the poor. Wars against ignorance and wars out of ignorance. My question is simple: Should we be at war, too, we, the scholars, the intellectuals? Is it really our duty to add fresh ruins to fields of ruins? Is it really the task of the humanities to add deconstruction to destruction? More iconoclasm to iconoclasm?What has become of the critical spirit? Has it run out of steam? Quite simply, my worry is that it might not be aiming at the right target. To remain in the metaphorical atmosphere of the time, military experts constantly revise their strategic doctrines, their contingency plans, the size, direction, and technology of their projectiles, their smart bombs, theirmissiles; I wonder why we, we alone, would be saved from those sorts of revisions. It does not seem to me that we have been as quick, in academia, to prepare ourselves for new threats, new dangers, new tasks, new targets. Are wenot like thosemechanical toys that endlesslymake the samegesturewhen everything else has changed around them? Would it not be rather terrible if we were still training young kids—yes, young recruits, young cadets—for wars that are no longer possible, fighting enemies long gone, conquering territories that no longer exist, leaving them ill-equipped in the face of threats we had not anticipated, for whichwe are so thoroughlyunprepared? Generals have always been accused of being on the ready one war late— especially French generals, especially these days. Would it be so surprising,

William Faulkner (1897-2003) algunas reflexiones en torno a ¡Absalón, Absalón!

The moral malaise that afflicts the inhabitants of the American South in the twentieth century and the origin of that trauma for the crime of slavery are addressed in Absalom, Absalom! (1,936). Through Thomas Sutpen, the tragic hero of the piece, and its history, the existing truth is questioned after the Confederate myth, so we can judge the moral responsibility of the pioneer Quine believes in a dismal replica Mississippi Southern society that preceded the Civil War, he being also the destroyer. The four generations of Sutpen spread like a plague damn parental crime, and feeling guilty spectra become of this. The work of certain features of American individualism are deducted, for example the need to be recognized as persons. As the biblical King David, and of which Faulkner derived the title of his work, Thomas Sutpen emerges from its own power over their fellow men, violates the moral code and produces suffering in their children. Both in the house of David and the retribution Sutpen takes the form of violent crime, rebellion, incest, fratricide, the parallels in history are not extensive but significant enough to indicate the human condition century after century .

Presentation of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation 2003 Founders’ Medal to Dr. Jules B. Puschett

Presentation of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation 2003 Founders’ Medal to Dr. Jules B. Puschett

Celebrating the SSCI: The Drug Discovery Pathway: Challenges and Pitfalls

It is interesting to examine the beginnings of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation, to experience the impact that it has had in clinical investigation and in the development of new medical concepts, and new therapeutic approaches that benefit mankind. In a sense, this is a celebration of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation and I would like to touch on 3 areas. First, the historical beginnings of the Society and how it set about expressing its principles and its culture. Second, the connectedness of clinical science with all aspects of human knowledge.

Southern Society for Clinical Investigation Founders' Medal Recipient's Address

Southern Society for Clinical Investigation Founders' Medal Recipient's Address

Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith

Throughout human history, motherhood and maternal experience have been largely defined and written by a patriarchal culture. Religion, art, medicine, psychoanalysis, and other bastions of male power have objectified the maternal and have disregarded female subjectivity. As a result, maternal perspectives have been ignored and the mother's voice silenced. In recent literary texts, however, more substantial attention has been given to motherhood and to the physical, psychological, social, and cultural dynamics affecting maternal experience. In Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith, Paula Gallant Eckard examines how maternal experience is depicted in selected novels by three American writers, emphasizing how they focus on the body and the voice of the mother. These novels include: The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved by Morrison; In Country, Spence + Lila, and Feather Crowns by Mason; and Oral History, Fair and Tender Ladies, and Saving Grace by Smith. By employing this focus, these writers lessen the objectification the maternal has received and restore a rich subjectivity that foregrounds the mother's perspective. Moreover, their fiction reflects a deep concern for history and culture and for a woman's experience of her world. They challenge the traditional representations of black and white motherhood that have appeared in southern literature and society, rendering complex portrayals of motherhood that defy cultural stereotypes. Eckard incorporates historical perspectives on African American and southern motherhood, utilizing the works of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Sally McMillen, Deborah White, Jacqueline Jones, and others. She draws upon the feminist criticism of Adrienne Rich, Elaine Showalter, Naomi Schor, Tillie Olsen, Karla F. C. Holloway, Barbara Christian, and others, and the linguistic and psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigaray. The author also addresses the cross-cultural connections shared by Morrison, Mason, and Smith, showing that, despite their racial and cultural differences, striking similarities can be found in their renderings of maternity. The three women writers employ related image patterns, metaphors, and symbols involving the maternal body. By centering maternity so strongly in their novels, Morrison, Mason, and Smith establish the primacy of the mother and obviate the neglect to which maternal perspectives have been subjected. They restore the mother's lost voice and her diminished subjectivity. Together they depict the maternal as a powerful force that shapes human lives and communities.

'The manly game': Cricket and masculinity in Savannah, Georgia in 1859

This study examines the rise and fall of the Savannah Cricket Club in 1859. It demonstrates that while cricket had deep historical roots in Georgia, there were specific reasons for the creation of the SCC in 1859. Most important of these was the players' own perception of their masculine identity, and the opportunity that cricket offered as a forum for its expression. By 1860, however, the approaching Civil War meant that military activity replaced sport as the main forum for expressing manliness. This study aims to shed new light on the interaction of sport, leisure and gender in antebellum Southern society.

Plain folk in a rich man's war: class and dissent in Confederate Georgia

This text aims to shed new light on how planter self-interest, government indifference, and the very nature of southern society produced a rising tide of dissent and disaffection among Georgia's plain folk during the Civil War.

Complicating Slavery: Teaching with Runaway Slave Advertisements

Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of the American Revolution was the abolition of slavery in the northern states. It ended slavery where it had once flourished, began the process of reconstructing black life in freedom, and initiated a series of emancipations which eventually banished slavery from the Americas. With abolition, slavery was no longer a continental institution, but a sectional one. The North became the land of freedom; the South the land of slavery. Since that division became the basis of the titanic struggle that led to the Civil War, it is important for students to trace it back into the eighteenth cen tury. This exercise is designed to force students to look at Ameri can slavery with different eyes and rethink the nature of both northern and southern society. Slavery was marginal to some parts of the northern economy and society in the colonial period, but central to others. In the mid-eighteenth century, slavery expanded in the middle colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Throughout the North?especially in these Mid-Atlantic states?slaveholders fiercely contested abolition after the war, therefore progress to wards its completion was painfully slow. Nevertheless, it was the American Revolution that put the North on the path to becoming the free states. To understand the impact of the Revolution, students must appreciate the importance of slavery in the northern colonies prior to emancipation. Exposure to the history of slavery in the North challenges the traditional understanding of chattel bond age as a peculiarly southern institution. Indeed, the runaway advertisements that feature northern masters hunting down slaves who had fled to southern colonies reverse the image of fugitive slaves following the North Star to freedom. Slave advertisements can also lead perceptive students to question the equation of slavery with people of African descent, and vice versa. Reading about white servants running away with black slaves, or about black slaves passing as free, imparts a sense of the complex nature of colonial slavery and servitude as well as race and class.

HINTON ROWAN HELPER: THE LOGICAL OUTCOME OF THE NON-SLAVEHOLDERS' PHILOSOPHY?

A valuable window into the world of non-slaveholding whites is provided by Hinton Rowan Helper's The impending crisis of the South (1857). This native North Carolinian purported to articulate the views and concerns of his class in a devastating critique of slaveholders and southern society. Helper was the only southern intellectual to theorize and conceptualize non-slaveholders fully as a distinct class and this article examines his arguments and evaluates his claim to be representative of their thinking. It suggests that although this group was far too diverse for any one opinion to be truly representative, The impending crisis recorded a sense of discontent found within certain sections of the non-slaveholding ranks ignored by consensus interpretations of the Old South reliant upon elite sources of evidence.

An Education in Southern Masculinity: The Ball Family of South Carolina in the New Republic

IN THE 1780s JOHN BALL SR., RECENTLY MARRIED TO HIS FIRST COUSIN and inheritor of several hundred acres on two plantations from his late father, assumed leadership of one of the South's wealthiest, most powerful families. Along with similarly prominent kin groups, including the Bulls and Pinckneys of John's native South Carolina and the Carrolls and Lees of the Chesapeake Bay region, the Balls had, by the Revolutionary era, enjoyed nearly a century of power and prestige in the South. (1) As rich, slaveholding planters with commercial ties throughout the Atlantic world, families such as these tended to monopolize political offices in their provincial governments as well as the paths to wealth and social prominence. Colonial assumptions about the importance of deference and the power of lineage, coupled with the synergetic economic and political domination of these men and their relatives, meant that few of the lesser sorts challenged gentry command of colonial society. (2) But as John Sr. took charge of the Ball patrimony in the midst of the American Revolution, the structures of colonial society and government--and the cultural assumptions that underlay them--had begun to erode. By the time John Sr.'s eldest son and namesake came of age at the turn of the nineteenth century, southern elites, who had enjoyed a long history of unchallenged mastery, faced a changing world. John Ball Jr. and his cohort numbered among the first sons of the United States. (3) In the wake of the American Revolution and during the transition to a market economy, personal accomplishments mattered more and family lineage mattered less. Increasingly, elite men needed to prove their merit to their peers rather than relying on inherited status from their families. Certainly the wealthy enjoyed easier access to education, refinement, reputation, and other determinants of social worth. However, this rising generation had to cultivate these attributes publicly in order to acquire the power their fathers had simply assumed. Simultaneously, slaveholding southerners heard the first rumblings of antislavery sentiment from the North. The questions thus arose: How could a nation founded on the principle of personal liberty deny freedom to African Americans and endorse slavery? Could one be a virtuous citizen of the republic and also be a slave owner? The answers remained unclear in the early republic; the questions alone, however, implicitly challenged the southern economy and southern gentry society. As boys of John Jr.'s age grew to manhood, the class and racial foundations of American society shifted beneath their feet. John Sr. and his wife, Jane Ball, thus faced a daunting task in rearing their offspring in the early republic. John Jr. had to prepare himself for a leadership position in southern society. His future prospects and the vitality of the Ball family hung in the balance. Sixteen-year-old John Ball Jr.'s departure for Harvard College in the summer of 1798 produced an intensive letter-writing effort on the part of his parents, aimed at steering the boy toward a proper education, code of masculine conduct, and respect for family duty--in short, toward the cultivation of leadership skills. (The parents preserved copies of their own letters but not those of their son.) (4) The surviving letters only hint at John Jr.'s reaction to the advice proffered. But they clearly define the masculine identity John Jr.'s parents expected him to adopt, a set of qualities that struck a balance between embracing national values and conserving southern customs. The Ball family correspondence thus provides a compelling look at white southern masculine ideals in the new nation, even as the South as a self-defined region first began to take shape. Indeed, John Sr.'s letters read like a prescriptive manual for achieving southern genteel manhood. Jane Ball also contributed to the grooming of John Jr., but as was typical among elite southern families, the father played the greater role in delineating the parameters of appropriate male behavior. …

The Bewaji, Van Binsbergen and Ramose debate on Ubuntu

What follows is a discussion, in three parts, of the African concept of ubuntu and related issues. In the first part of the discussion J.A.I. Bewaji assesses an essay by W.M.J. van Binsbergen on Ubuntu and the Globalisation of Southern African Thought and Society (2001). In the second part Bewaji reviews M.B. Ramose’s African Philosophy through Ubuntu (2002). And in the third part Ramose responds to both Bewaji and Van Binsbergen. Although Ramose disagrees with some of Bewaji’s comments and interpretations - especially with regard to the thesis on which ubuntu is, according to the former, founded (i.e. “that ontology proper is a rheology”) - both Bewaji and Ramose agree that Van Binsbergen’s critique of ubuntu philosophy, and specifically of Ramose’s explication thereof; is untenable.

Southern Jewish History

What began eight years ago as modest oral history program at the College of Charleston has blossomed into major traveling exhibit with the ambition of revolutionizing how American Jews think about their history. A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life chronicles the long, eventful saga of Jews in the American South—anticipating the 350th anniversary of Jews in America in 2004. The exhibit title comes from letter written in 1816 by Charleston born Isaac Harby, journalist, playwright, and leader of the Reformed Society of Israelites, to Secretary of State James Monroe. Protesting the removal of the American consul to Tunis, Mordecai Manual Noah, because he was Jew, Harby reminded the future president, They [the Jews] are by no means to be considered as Religious sect, tolerated by the government; they constitute portion of the People. In the context of the show, a portion of the people has an ironic twist. The acceptance Jews enjoyed in South Carolina and the ease with which they integrated into society came at price. For while Carolina was the first political entity to treat Jews as equals, it also was the only colony on the American mainland whose charter sanctioned racial slavery. Jews were equal—to other white people. Along with Huguenots and diverse groups of Christian dissenters, they bolstered the number of whites in colony and state with black majority. Subscribing to the dominant morality, Jews accepted slavery, as well as other distinctively southern institutions such as states' rights and dueling. Becoming a portion of the people also meant that southern Jews might assimilate into the mainstream and marry out of Judaism alto gether. Indeed, few descendants of Carolina's first families are still Jewish, though most are proud of their Jewish lineage. The drama of the exhibit lies in the simultaneous efforts Jews have made to become part of southern society and to sustain their Jewish identity. A Portion of the People has come long way—from the tidal flats and foothills of South Carolina to the bright lights of New York City, where the exhibit, co-sponsored by Yeshiva University Museum and the

Presentation of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation 2002 Founders’ Medal to Dr. James B. Dale

Presentation of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation 2002 Founders’ Medal to Dr. James B. Dale

Southern Society for Clinical Investigation: Constitution, Bylaws, and Amendments

Southern Society for Clinical Investigation: Constitution, Bylaws, and Amendments

Southern Society for Clinical Investigation Founders’ Medal Recipient’s Address

I thank the SSCI and the members of the council for presenting to me the Founders’ Medal. This is a very great honor. As a young attendee of these meetings, I recall the presentation of the Founders’ Medal as a highlight of the plenary session. It gave us all a glimpse into the lives of senior academicians that most of us knew only by scientific reputation. I never imagined that I would one day receive the award. The presentation was especially meaningful to me coming from Andy Kang, who is himself a previous recipient of this award and a person who has had a significant influence on my career as my Chairman, advisor, and friend.

Between North and South: The Letters of Emily Wharton Sinkler, 1842-1865

EMILY WHARTON SINKLER was only eighteen years old when she began to write to distant relatives, chronicling her experiences on an antebellum cotton plantation. The daughter of prominent Philadelphia lawyer Thomas Wharton, Emily had married Charles Sinkler of South Carolina and moved south to begin a new life. Emily's letters ring with keen insights into Southern society and offer a definitive account of a young woman transplanted to the South in 1842 through the Civil War. This frequent and thorough correspondence conveys the rich and varied details of a time divided between North and South. Her urban background contrasted greatly with her daily duties as a rural plantation mistress, and she describes creating a world of culture in the midst of the swamps of South Carolina. She writes of fabulous lancing tournaments, exciting horse races, and vivid evenings full of games, dancing, and music. At the same time, she was pioneering her way in a rural, isolated environment, inventing alternatives for everyday necessities, and managing the resources of a plantation. She also tells of her interest in religion and African American culture and how she established a church where she taught reading to African Americans. Determined and inventive, Emily Sinkler lived very successfully in two different worlds. Her passionate account of the antebellum period re-creates a time in American history when both regions were setting a perilous course.