My uncle David and my mother are the last ones. All the rest of them — the aunts, the uncles — are gone. Born throughout the 1940s, my parents’ generation has reduced steadily in number since about 2010, with my dad being the first one out. So, when David texted…

I think it is fair to say that most Southerners know the basics about the Civil Rights movement . . . but not much more. And certainly not much about how it led to our culture today. Going beyond the image of Rosa Parks’ arrest, the footage of police dogs…

The new Netflix documentary State of Alabama v Brittany Smith (2022) gives a glimpse into the difficult story of a north Alabama woman who pleaded guilty to the murder of a man who she says raped her in her own home. Brittany Smith’s life had already been hard when this…

“In The News” is published quarterly and provides a sampling of stories, articles, or reviews that reference or relate to beliefs, myths, and narratives in Southern culture since 1970. “Town’s Black Citizens Sue Police Department Over Mississippi ‘Martial Law’” from Newsweek (August 16, 2022) “In the recording, first reported by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, [police officer] Sam Dobbins, who is white, also allegedly bragged about killing 13 people in the line of duty and used the n-word…

Hal Crowther’s writing about the South is full of head-on honesty, biting wit, and humane nuance in a way that too few writers of nonfiction are, and this collection gives a well-rounded view of his style and substance. Published by LSU Press in 2000, Cathedrals of Kudzu offers twenty-nine short…

The two-part PBS documentary The Downing of a Flag studies the history of the Confederate flag in South Carolina, using the 2015 murder of nine people in Charleston by a white supremacist as the basis of the narrative. The story twists and turns during the 150 years between the end…

Browsing PBS’s app on Roku, I came across “ Sapelo haphazardly, and within a short time, I thought, “Man, I know who that is.” Dr. Cornelia Walker Bailey had joined the story of what had thus far been two African-American boys playing around the woods, fields, and ponds. Bailey is…

In the News, Summer 2022 “In The News” is published quarterly and provides a sampling of stories, articles, or reviews that reference or relate to beliefs, myths, and narratives in Southern culture since 1970. “Debunking myths about gun violence” from Johns Hopkins University (June 13, 2022) “But the places with the highest rates of death…

One commonly held narrative says that the integration of Southern schools occurred in the 1960s. However, the changes at that time were neither unprecedented, nor sudden. Since the 19th century, educators in the South have worked toward equality, and their efforts laid the groundwork for modern changes that have reached…