Myth of Southern Exceptionalism

The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (2009), edited by Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino

Anthology published by Oxford University Press. Lassiter also wrote the first chapter, “De Jure/De Facto Segregation: The Long Shadow of a National Myth” and cowrote the introduction, “The End of Southern History” (with Crespino). View the table of contents here and below.

Book Jacket: More than one-third of the population of the United States now lives in the South, a region where politics, race relations, and the economy have changed dramatically since World War II. Yet historians and journalists continue to disagree over whether the modern South is dominating, deviating from, or converging with the rest of the nation. Has the time come to declare the end of southern history? And how do the stories of American history change if the South is no longer seen as a region apart–as the conservative counterpoint to a liberal national ideal?

The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism challenges the idea of southern distinctiveness in order to offer a new way of thinking about modern American history. For too long, the belief in an exceptional South has encouraged distortions and generalizations about the nation’s otherwise liberal traditions, especially by compartmentalizing themes of racism, segregation, and political conservatism in one section of the country. This volume dismantles popular binaries–of de facto versus de jure segregation, red state conservatism versus blue state liberalism, the “South” versus the “North”–to rewrite the history of region and nation alike.

Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino present thirteen essays–framed by their provocative introduction–that reinterpret major topics such as the civil rights movement in the South and the North, the relationship between conservative backlash and liberal reform throughout the country, the rise of the Religious Right as a national phenomenon, the emergence of the metropolitan Sunbelt, and increasing suburban diversity in a multiracial New South.

The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism-Select Reviews and Media Coverage

“The South Returns to America,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (March 26, 2006). This three-part feature covered the origins of the anthology in a March 23-24, 2006 conference at Emory University, “The End of Southern History? Integrating the Modern South and the Nation,” including a keynote address by President Jimmy Carter.

“Can This Be ‘The End of Southern History?'” Newhouse News Service (March 20, 2006).

C-Span interview with Matthew Lassiter about Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (April 9, 2010)

The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism-Table of Contents

Introduction: The End of Southern History, Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino

Part One: The Northern Mystique
1. De Jure/De Facto Segregation: The Long Shadow of a National Myth, Matthew D. Lassiter
2. Hidden in Plain Sight: The Civil Rights Movement outside the South, Jeanne Theoharis, Brooklyn College, CUNY
3. Blinded by a “Barbaric” South: Prison Horrors, Inmate Abuse, and the Ironic History of American Penal Reform, Heather Ann Thompson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Part Two: Imagining the South
4. Mississippi as Metaphor: Civil Rights, the South, and the Nation in the Historical Imagination, Joseph Crespino
5. Black as Folk: The Southern Civil Rights Movement and the Folk Music Revival, Grace Elizabeth Hale, University of Virginia
6. Red Necks, White Sheets, and Blue States: The Persistence of Regionalism in the Politics of Hollywood, Allison Graham, University of Memphis

Part Three: Border Crossings
7. A Nation in Motion: Norfolk, the Pentagon, and the Nationalization of the Metropolitan South, 1941-1953, James T. Sparrow, University of Chicago
8. The Cold War at the Grassroots: Militarization and Modernization in South Carolina, Kari Frederickson, University of Alabama
9. African-American Suburbanization and Regionalism in the Modern South, Andrew Wiese, San Diego State University
10. Latin American Immigration and the New Multiethnic South, Mary E. Odem, Emory University

Part Four: Political Realignment
11. Into the Political Thicket: Reapportionment and the Rise of Suburban Power, Douglas Smith, Occidental College
12. Beyond the Southern Cross: The National Origins of the Religious Right, Kevin M. Kruse, Princeton University
13. Neo-Confederacy against the New Deal: The Regional Utopia of the Modern American Right, Nancy MacLean, Northwestern University