In this Book
- The Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: The University of North Carolina Press
- Series: New Directions in Southern Studies
summary
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.
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.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. i-vi
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xii
- Part I: The Long Shadow of Scopes
- pp. 27-30
- Part II: The Writer as Southerner
- pp. 87-89
- Part III: The Amassment of Resistance
- pp. 167-171
- Bibliography
- pp. 275-292
Additional Information
ISBN
9781469614519
Related ISBN(s)
9781469611648, 9781469611655, 9798890842947
MARC Record
OCLC
873946870
Pages
324
Launched on MUSE
2014-05-02
Language
English
Open Access
No