the myth of southern exceptionalism nov 2009

[...]... legends of opulence and success and innocence.”15 In 1960, at the height of massive resistance to the civil rights movement, a 8 THE MYTH OF SOUTHERN EXCEPTIONALISM new generation of southern historians marked the centennial of the outbreak of the Civil War with an anthology titled The Southerner as American The contributors attacked notions of southern exceptionalism and national innocence, and they... that mythical non-South [that] had become virtually synonymous with the idea of America itself.”17 The modern field of southern history came of age during the reign of the “liberal consensus,” when the myths of American exceptionalism were at their most powerful, and when the conflation of the North” with a triumphant narrative of American history was most pronounced During the early years of the Cold... University of California Press, 2003) 6 Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads, 1965 to 1985 (PBS Video, 1990), Episodes 7–14 For the “southernization of America” thesis, see John Egerton, The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974); Dan T Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, 18 THE MYTH OF SOUTHERN EXCEPTIONALISM the Origins... collective southern identity from national myths and American ideals In retrospect, it seems clear that the strategy of policing the boundaries of southern exceptionalism has done far more to sustain than to dismantle the myths of American exceptionalism In this sense, the problem of southern distinctiveness should be of concern not only to regional specialists but also to the many scholars of the “non-South”... and the myth of American innocence from responsibility for the past In a series of essays published during the 1950s, and then compiled in The Burden of Southern History (1960), Woodward argued that nothing in the South remained “immune from the disintegrating effect of nationalism and the pressure for conformity” except for the unique history of the region itself, the “collective experience of the Southern. .. Irony of Southern History” (1952), republished in Burden of Southern History (third ed.), 187–211 Larry Griffin has argued that Woodward’s assertions about southern identity should be considered “factually wrong” because of the exclusion of black southerners from his concept of the Southern people,” and because of the existence of multiple “Souths” and multiple “Americas” rather than a unitary version of. .. “Imagining the South,” trace the ideological work done by the idea of southern exceptionalism in the interrelated forums of political discourse and mass culture Southern narratives of romanticization and demonization have shaped the ways in which national audiences interpreted the civil rights era, while portable metaphors of regional exceptionalism and national convergence have informed the battles over the. .. empowered the suburbs at the expense of both the cities and the countryside In an investigation of the national origins of the Religious Right, Kevin Kruse moves beyond the conventional wisdom that southern televangelists led working-class fundamentalists into the culture wars of the 1970s Instead, Kruse emphasizes the grassroots mobilization of Christian nationalism in early Cold War America and the middle-class... on the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy A N D R E W W IE S E is Professor of History at San Diego State University He is the author of Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (2004) and co-editor of The Suburb Reader (2006) This page intentionally left blank THE MYTH OF SOUTHERN EXCEPTIONALISM This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION: THE. .. relations.42 The arrangement of the essays in this volume represents three main approaches, in terms of methodology and historiography, to overcoming the constraints of southern exceptionalism and reintegrating regional and national history Each of the contributors emphasizes the importance of comparative analysis that deliberately moves beyond the traditional boundaries of southern and “northern”—history, .