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Not Forgotten TheAnatomy ofthe South BY FRED HOBSON At some point, about the mid-1970s, die compelling sin ofthe South ceased to be racism (any more than in the rest of the country, anyway). It became public relations , image-making, which is perfecdy understandable since the image ofthe late Confederacy had been so bad for so long. About that time, each soudiern state began to boost itself, to identify itselfby tags and labels, slick and polished: "Virginia is for Lovers," Adanta "die City Too Busy to Hate" (a slogan which, thanks to die spirit ofPeachtree Street, had already been around for a while), and so on. But die labels I like best are anatomical ones. I used to live in Alabama, and anyone who lives in Alabama cannot escape the claim, announced annually on the state's license plates, that Alabama is the "Heart ofDixie." I am also a student of southern history and literature, and anyone who reads about the South for long must at some point come across a reference to North Carolina, in particular Chapel Hill (whether deservedly or not), as the "Mind of the Soudi." This notion of "Heart" and "Mind," body parts displayed geographically, led me to consider in a more general sense the South as living organism, as body not only spiritually and politically (as in "body politic") but indeed physically—led me, that is, to construct a sort of anatomical map, an "Anatomy of the South." Not anatomy metaphorically but anatomy in fact: certain southern parts do serve certain physical functions. First, visualize the South as animal: a grotesque, misshapen creature, quadruple amputee (befitting a veteran ofthe War Between the States) with an oversized head—a male creature lying on its belly, beaten down (under the North's oppressive weight), facing East. Then one sets about constructing an Anatomy of the South. One begins with the givens. North Carolina is reputedly die "Mind of the South" and Alabama die "Heart ofDixie." The Tar Heel State has long provided intellectual leadership for the Soudi: Howard W Odum and his social scientists in Chapel Hill, Gerald W.Johnson, W.J. Cash, and any number ofthe state's journalists and social critics have shaped soudiern thought. North Carolina has always considered Dixie rationally, not viscerally. As the Heart ofDixie, Alabama is visceral, corporeal. It has, traditionally, tiiought widi its blood, which generally runs bright red. Alabama rushed into die Civil War; North Carolina waited and considered. The intellectual detachment of North Carolina it finds impossible, and its politics bear witness. But, first, return to the upper coastal South, die head and face of the creature 114 North Carolina (righthemisphere) and Virginia (lefthemisphere). called Dixie. IfNorth Carolina is the mind, Virginia is above it and serves a cerebral function as well. Virginia is for lovers, yes, but in an ethereal, metaphysical sense. Lovers of the true and good and beautiful. Duty. Devotion. Sacrifice. Chivalry. Noblesse oblige. These are the qualities Robert E. Lee was supposed to have embodied and Thomas Nelson Page to have illustrated and defined for the rest of the South. Virginia was the Platonic ideal to which die Deep Soudi aspired , the image from which the rest ofDixie sprang. Alabama, for instance, built mansions on the Virginia model, adopted chivalry and noblesse oblige. But there was always something missing. Alabama, still frontier in the 1 840s and a rough, aggressive place, lacked die gentility ofthe land from which its forebears sprang. To the present day, die manner of the older South, of Virginia, is mixed widi a Not Forgotten 115 left: Mouth Carolina. right: Beneath the leaf Florida. (Not to scale.) frontier vitality in Alabama, expressing itself (at least until very recendy) mainly in championship football. (The upper South—the Adantic coast plus Kentucky —plays basketball.) Alabama is, then, a strange admixture of manners and football, both more and less tiian die real thing, not a true Tidewater but—in deference to rule by pigskin—a Crimson Tidewater. IfAlabama is heart and North Carolina and Virginia the faculties ofreason and imagination, South Carolina—located on the lower part of the face—represents the mouth ofdie Soudi, Dixie's voice. It works both spatially and...

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