http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
public criticism, southern inferiority, and the politics of whiteness
By the 1920s, the sectional reconciliation that had seemed achievable after Reconstruction was foundering, and the South was increasingly perceived and portrayed as impoverished, uneducated and backward. In this interdisciplinary study, Angie Maxwell examines and connects three key twentieth-century moments in which the South was exposed to intense public criticism, identifying in white southerners' responses a pattern of defensiveness that shaped the region's political and cultural conservatism. Maxwell exposes the way the perception of regional inferiority confronted all types of southerners, focusing on the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee and the birth of the anti-evolution movement, the publication of I'll Take My Stand and the turn to New Criticism by the Southern Agrarians and Virginia's campaign of Massive Resistance and Interposition in response to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Tracing the effects of media scrutiny and the ridicule that characterized national discourse in each of these cases, Maxwell reveals the reactionary responses that linked modern southern whiteness with anti-elitism, states' rights, fundamentalism, and majoritarianism.
Introduction : the anatomy of inferiority -- The triptych of the twenties : Bryan, Darrow, and Mencken and what they meant to the white South -- Tennessee vs. civilization : Scopes takes on a southern accent -- Reactionary fundamentalism : the founding of William Jennings Bryan College -- Fugitives captured : the wasteland of southern identity -- A knock at midnight : the Agrarian plea for the South -- The not so new criticism : reconfigured, yet unregenerate -- Black, white, gray, and brown : the Old Dominion confronts integration -- Byrd watching : the South on the national stage -- Excursion into fantasy : the doctrine of interposition -- Epilogue : the politics of inferiority : conservatism, creationism, and the culture wars.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
HISTORY / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)
9781469611648 (paperback : alkaline paper)