Carolina Piedmont Country

Preface

P R E F A C E Folklife, a familiar concept in European scholarship for over a century, is the sum of a community's traditional forms of expression and behavior. It has claimed the attention of American folklorists since the 1950$. Each volume in the Folklife in the South Series focuses on the shared traditions that link people with their past and provide meaning and continuity for them in the present, and sets these traditions in the social contexts in which they flourish. Prepared by recognized scholars in various academic disciplines, these volumes are designed to be read separately. Each contains a vivid description of one region's traditional cultural element—ethnic and mainstream, rural and urban—that, in concert with those of other recognizable southern regions, lend a unique interpretation to the complex social structure of the South. This extensive study of the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina focuses upon Carolina cotton country—the area roughly between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Greenville, South Carolina. While the folklife of this area has deep and diverse roots, its heritage was principally shaped by cotton production and processing, beginning after the CivilWar with the Anglo and African Americans who lived on small farms and in quiet crossroads towns. In the wake of Reconstruction the Piedmont sprouted a number of industrial towns whose cotton mills utilized the area's inexpensive power, labor, and materials. This book examines the early folkways and reviews the process by which these evolved into contemporary Piedmont folklife—the customs, values, beliefs, stories, social and religious activities, foodways, architecture and other traditions that give the region its distinctive character. William Lynwood Montell S E R I E S E D I T O R Vît This page intentionally left blank ...