Pointing a Way Forward

This article introduces a special issue of Southern Cultures, the “Women’s Issue,” which examines women, gender, and sexuality in the American South. Taking the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment as its starting place, the introduction considers the meaning of the centennial from the perspective of southern women’s history and the history of the Jim Crow South. The article then turns to the rise of feminist print media in the 1960s and 1970s, and how the special issue builds on the legacies of the women’s movement in the South. It explores how a distinctive southern women’s history emerged in the same period. Finally, it concludes by connecting the issue to recent scholarship on Black women’s history; Latina history; queer, lesbian, and trans histories; as well as contemporary social movements.