Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History

"Newcomers to the South often remark that southerners, at least white southerners, are still fighting the Civil War - a strange preoccupation considering that the war formally ended more than 135 years ago and fewer than a third of southerners today can claim an ancestor who actually fought in the conflict. But even if the war is far removed both in time and genealogy, it survives in the hearts of many of the region's residents and often in national newspaper headlines concerning battle flags, racial justice, and religious conflicts. In this sweeping narrative of the South from the Civil War to the present, noted historian David Goldfield contemplates the roots of southern memory and explains how this memory has shaped the modern South both for good and ill." "He discusses how and why white southern men fashioned the myths of the Lost Cause and the Redemption out of the Civil War and Reconstruction. They shaped a religion to canonize the heroes and reify the events of those fated years. History became both fact and faith. The men mobilized these myths to secure their domination over African Americans and white women, as well as over the South's political and economic systems. Goldfield also recounts how blacks and white women eventually crafted a different, more inclusive version of southern history and how that new vision has competed with more traditional perspectives." As Goldfield shows, the battle for southern history, and for the South, continues - in museums, public spaces, books, state legislatures, and the minds of southerners. Given the region's population boom, growing economic power, and political influence, the outcome of this war is more than a historian's preoccupation; it is of national importance. Integrating history and memory, religion, race, and gender, Still Fighting the Civil War will help newcomers, longtime residents, and curious outsiders alike attain a better understanding of the South and each other.

Publishers Weekly

The South, according to Goldfield, has a serious identity crisis regarding race. An example: Kentucky was a Northern state during the Civil War, yet today Todd County, Ky., holds a "Miss Confederacy" contest in which the winner is judged by her "poise, hair, hooped skirt, and answers to questions such as `What will you do... to promote and defend Southern heritage?' " But the biggest divide is between the experiences of whites and blacks, and this provocative book raises the difficult question of how and if Southern history can honor the different, often deeply antithetical experiences of black and white Southerners. Goldfield (Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture), professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, carefully uncovers and dissects many aspects of Southern history how evangelical Christianity evolved to embrace white supremacy; the role white women assumed as wives and mothers in maintaining and promoting the unequal racial status quo after the Civil War; Booker T. Washington's call to Southern blacks "to submit to segregation... in exchange for white assistance in gaining educational opportunities" and charts the myriad ways in which, according to the author, racism has become accepted and integral to how Southern heritage is conceptualized. Goldfield's main focus, however, is in making the case that while blacks and whites have held radically different visions of it, a more unified Southern history is possible. Goldfield notes that "the danger is that both visions will reside, as do the races, in parallel universes"; he points out that while 100 Southern cities have renamed streets to honor Martin Luther King, most "run through dilapidated black neighborhoods." Drawing on a wide range of sources as well as contemporary reporting, this deftly written historical analysis takes on a difficult topic with passion, sensitivity and integrity. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.