What is the South?
Fitzhugh Brundage reflects on an ambitious undertaking
“A NEW HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH,” edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage (University of North Carolina Press, 616 pages, $45).
We tend to think of the South as a region drenched in tradition, resistant to change. “A New History of the American South” challenges that notion. The book’s editor, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, assembled 15 leading historians to explain the “wrenching transformations” in the South. The result is a landmark volume that explains the South from many perspectives, through various interpretative lenses, over the course of centuries.
Brundage is the William Umstead Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A historian of race, memory and violence in the post-Civil War South, his books include “The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory” and “Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. He answered questions via email from Chapter 16:
Q: What is the “old” history of the South? If this book came out 50 years ago, what would it look like?
A: Fifty years ago, a history of the South was almost certain to devote much (perhaps even most) attention to identifying the historical moment when the South deviated from the path pursued by the rest of the nation and then tracing the South’s subsequent deviation. Gallons and gallons of ink were devoted to defining Southern regional distinctiveness and measuring that distinctiveness over time.
Q: So what is the “new” history?
A: Historians now emphasize the historical agency and presence of all the region’s inhabitants. It is not just that the history of the South is more inclusive now, but that it is also “recentered” in many regards. The early history of the region is no longer dominated by the Jamestown saga. No longer is the North presumed to be the standard against which contemporaries judged the South.
Q: Is it fair to classify race as an organizing principle in Southern history? Given today’s political battles over the past, what can this volume tell us about the historical currents of the region?
A: That’s a daunting question to answer! First, I think it is important to recognize that the Southern states have only the briefest history of civic pluralism. Formal and informal power has for most of the region’s history been in the hands of a small number of residents. The civic traditions in the region since the nation’s founding have not encouraged tolerance of dissent or difference. Since roughly 1970, the South has experienced, in fits and starts, the creation of civic pluralism, which has been manifest in the most democratic politics the region has ever enjoyed and broadest participation in the region’s civic institutions.
The emergence of pluralism in the region has been uneven and halting, in part because the region itself is evolving in myriad ways. Whether we distinguish high-growth and low-growth regions, or map ethnic diversity onto the region, it is clear that the future of, say, Loudoun County in northern Virginia is certain to widen from that of Barbour County in southeastern Alabama. As a consequence, making projections about the future of “the South” as a cohesive region is certain to be a fool’s errand.
Q: In your introduction, you write about how, over time, we have defined and characterized the South. What makes something “Southern”? Where is the South, anyway?
A: Great questions. Provocative as well. I confess that I don’t have a concise answer to any of these. And the reason isn’t because as an academic I am obligated to make everything complicated. But rather because what has been defined as “Southern” has never been constant.
Let me offer two quick examples. I often ask my students to identify a defining Southern foodway. They usually say biscuits. The Southern embrace of biscuits is a post-Civil War phenomenon. Before then, most Americans associated Southerners with cornbread. Or think of the genre of country music. Country music unquestionably has deep roots in the American South. But in its formative years the genre was saturated with all manner of “Western” influences. And, crucially, the definition of “Southern” is in the eyes of the beholder. Plenty of “Southerners” will insist that Florida really isn’t Southern, or Texas isn’t Southern, or northern Virginia isn’t Southern, while Kentucky or Maryland is Southern. So I find it especially interesting to ask what is being identified as Southern by whom and in what context.
To read an uncut version of this interview — and more local book coverage — visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.